'Brain decline' begins at age 27

BBC News 10:38 GMT, Monday, 16 March 2009

 

Mental abilities decline at a relatively young age, experts suspect

 

Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests.

 

Professor Timothy Salthouse of Virginia University found reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation all decline in our late 20s.

Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said.

 

His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

 

To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols.

The same tests are already used by doctors to spot signs of dementia.

 

In nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22.

The first age at which there was any marked decline was at 27 in tests of brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability.

 

Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60.

 

Professor Salthouse said his findings suggested "some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy, educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s."

 

Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer's Research Trust agreed, saying: "This research suggests that the natural decline of some of our mental abilities as we age starts much earlier than some of us might expect - in our 20s and 30s.

"Understanding more about how healthy brains decline could help us understand what goes wrong in serious diseases like Alzheimer's.

"Alzheimer's is not a natural part of getting old; it is a physical disease that kills brain cells, affecting tens of thousands of under 65s too.

 

"Much more research is urgently needed if we are to offer hope to the 700,000 people in the UK who live with dementia, a currently incurable condition."

 

Any thoughts with the results of this study?

Quite interesting. :D

 

I don't believe it though sometimes. :(

im not that convince though...but it's an interesting topic!!

On average perhaps - maybe this refers to our learning capacity or maybe its reflective of the number of years you've spent watching so-called prime time TV and reading pish periodicals.

 

I'm 32 tomorrow, I don't feel any more off the ball than 10 years ago - more on it if anything.

i didnt notice anything until into my early 40's, my eyesight was the first thing to start to deteriorate, then it was my short term memory, but im not so sure my capacity to reason and think is any worse then what it was 30 years ago... if anything its perhaps better because of the experience of living/reasoning/thought.

I think in some aspect the brain would start to decline, but in other ways it wouldn't. Like what Rob said.

Well we were never really meant to live past 30 so it's something we have to "sacrifice" (is that the right word?) for it.

Woo well I've got 7 years and 16 days to go! :cheer: Well 2 years, 16 days until my peak :D

I really dont know how this can actually be the case tbh.....

 

Albert Einstein - Nobel Prize for his works in Physics in 1922, when he was in his 40s, and he continued to write papers well into his 50s and 60s.. He did most of his best work (including the Theory of Relativity) after the age of supposed "brain decline"....

 

Isaac Newton - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3...pia_Mathematica - published in 1687, when Newton was in his 40s.....

 

Sigmund Freud - his theories on the unconscious, his works on Psychoanalysis and dreams all came when he was well into his 30s... He continued to work and refine his theories well into his later life....

 

Charles Darwin - also continued to develop his theories on evolution well into his 40s and 50s

 

The above examples who did by far their most important works at older than 27 years old, I feel, rather torpedo the hypothesis that this post-27 "brain decline" occurs....