Vintage brains

Ah, the joys of getting older are without number…no really, they are! There is for instance, the realisation that you don’t have to wear that uncomfortable pair of pants anymore just because they are in fashion. Boredom is also a thing of the past because even in the quietest moments your body can be relied upon to be doing something to entertain you; it could be sprouting hair in a previously undreamt place, you might be able to listen to it sagging where once it held firm, and there are all sorts of pigment gains and losses going on that make your ageing body a kaleidoscope of fascinating colouration. Perhaps transcending all this is the power to say to boring, self-important people, “I’m sorry, you’re self-important and you are boring me. Bye now.” These are things you can’t do when you are 20 but from 35 onwards, these fundamental joys become possible. Despite this “ageing” still has a negative connotation heavily linked to decline. We all expect that our bodies will decline as we age and in particular we expect mental decline to accompany advancing years. In reality, neither of these perceptions is an accurate understanding of what happens as you age and new research has backed this up in showing that your brain actually gets better as you age.

For a start, these researchers fed computers information each day, equivalent to reading and learning new things as humans do. When only limited amounts of information were provided daily the performance of the computer on cognitive tests was similar to a person in their early 20s. However, when the amount of information given to the computer was equivalent to what a person might accumulate over many decades the “cognitive” function of the computer was slower. This was not because processing speed declined, but because it had a lot more data to process, which simply takes more time. If you only know 50 people’s names it is easier to remember them than if you have been exposed to thousands of names.

In a further experiment the researchers had people do a “paired-associate learning” test. This involved the subjects finding paired words. Some of the pairs made sense as in “up” and “down”, while other pairs had no connection in terms of meaning like “necktie” and “cracker”. The results showed that younger people did better overall and are less likely to notice that words don’t go together in terms of meaning while older adults match far more pairs where the words are actually linked.

So young adults are better able to choose one word given another but older adults find nonsense pairings harder to remember probably because they have a better understanding of language and they know a lot about which words go together. Who has the greater linguistic skill; the young person who matches words without thought for whether they go together or the older person who applies many rules of language in making word associations?

These researchers say that what this shows is that while the ageing brain may work slower, this is a consequence of accumulated information and in fact older people probably make better use of information.

Perhaps instead of seeing ageing as a process of deterioration that we need to halt, we would be better off seeing as a similar to the maturation of a good wine; a process where some things are lost and some things are gained. Rather than bemoaning your minor memory loss or slow down you should be appreciating your ageing brain for its full-bodied nature and fruity overtones.