A few years ago the New York Times' science writer published a book called "The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind. She summarized the latest medical research, which was concluding that brain performance didn't really taper off as we aged, and there were actual spikes in performance in specific areas.
While there were smaller declines in things like remembering names, one theory was that what we know gets consolidated, allowing older brains to make greater leaps in logic more quickly. While older brains are distracted more easily, one study suggested people learn to compensate by using the left and right brain together to maintain focus and progress, and this results in bringing more "firepower" to bear on the tasks at hand.
The article is essentially a brief synopsis of a book by the same author, <i>The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind</i>.
This is some highlight from the book "The Secret Life of the Grown Up Brain" by Barbara Strauch
Neuroscientists found that:
* Longitudinal studies shows cognitive skills peak at middle age.
* Older people are happier. As one ages, they become calmer, more positive, and being able to regular them emotion better.
* The amount of white matter in the brain, myelin, continue to increase well into middle age. (i.e. better brain function)
* Older people are using both hemispheres of the brain to handle complex task, a phenomenon known as bilateralization. This is linked to higher cognitive ability.
The basic theory is that young brains soak up experience, while older brains consolidate it. So older brains can make bigger leaps of logic -- the old cliche about "wiser" old people actual does have a biological basis. I wonder if this new study is just another piece of the same phenomenon. (New memory is stored in a different part of the brain because the old plastic/learning-storage centers have already been optimized and compressed...)
The article doesn't give much information although I believe (believe, not know) that our brain deals with middle age in a smart way.
What is interesting to me is that one factor of brain ageing is the way our society is organized: we can't spend a lot of time learning after the university or when we don't have a lot of time to write code obsessively.
In my own experience, as a brain matures, it does not really slow down in its important functions but rather incurs occasional and seemingly inexplicable lapses - the "foggy moments" associated with entering into middle age. Nothing to do about them, since they are an inevitable part of aging. In my business, I do complex and strategic analysis all day long in innumerable situations involving often difficult problems and not once has any lapse of this type affected anything that really counts (I am in my late 50s).
At the same time, there is a quickness in grasping large volumes of factual material when one is in his 30s or younger that does recede a bit in the 40s and 50s and beyond. That is why learning a foreign language becomes harder as one gets older - but, in that task, even a 12-year old has advantages over one in his 20s. There are just certain phases of life in which the brain is like a sponge and, if one is bright, all manner of detail can not only be pretty quickly absorbed but made to stick.
The lesson here is not to take the quick-absorption phase of life for granted and squander it - that is precisely the time to throw yourself into the deep things of learning (in whatever field) and get the most out of them.
Beyond that, though, there is no need to fret. In almost every way, in my experience, an older person is able to function "at a higher level" (to borrow a sport metaphor) in terms of thinking and decision-making than is a younger one. This may stem from other elements that supplement raw brain-power, such as experience, wisdom, and maturity. Thus, in spite of the occasional lapses and the loss of some of the old quickness, I would not trade my current mental capacities for those I had at a younger age even if I could.
This piece makes excellent points about the importance of exercise and other forms of mental stimulation being not only helpful but also indispensable to staying sharp.
Therefore, as long as you have prepared yourself well when you are young, the rest is a mere continuation of the old pattern, maybe not as vibrant but nothing at all to be dismayed about (at least until dementia sets in!).
But that's partly because as people age, their brains get less flexible and open to learning new things. There's already been some work on fixing that specifically.
It's interesting how what we believe about our brains can actually influence how we end up using them. I subscribe to the neuroplasticity theory -- that your brain adapts to whatever you're doing the most. So some pathways become super-familiar (and harder to break out of) -- but you can start a new pattern with consistency. (One way people do this is with a carefully-chosen new routine.)
As far as aging goes, its impacts are more diverse than I thought, according to a really interesting book called "The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind." Aging brains really haven't been studied until recently, and newer research (cited in the book) suggests that in some ways the brain improves at certain kinds of thinking during aging. (A rough model is that you spend your youth acquiring a raw mass of experience, and as you age it gets consolidated into actionable chunks.) So while you may have trouble recalling specific facts, aging brains also out-perform when it comes to synthesizing existing information and extrapolating solutions.
That's just one example from the book. Basically, aging brains are a lot more interesting than we give them credit for.
I believe research (sorry no link) is showing that older people tend to actually have much better focus than younger people, and better memory of what they were focusing on (in the absence of actual neurological problems, e.g., Alzheimers).
Scientists used to think that brain connections developed at a rapid pace in the first few years of life, until you reached your mental peak in your early 20s. Your cognitive abilities would level off at around middle age, and then start to gradually decline. We now know this is not true.
Uh, (citation needed)? As far as I'm aware, the scientific community is pretty convinced that the adult brain has a large degree of neuroplasticity [1] and can retain a significant amount as we age [2]. It's also been shown what we refer to as "fluid intelligence" can actually be trained and optimized for [3]. I would argue that until real, systemic cognitive decline begins occurring (let's say ~65), any differences in an individual's ability to learn new things and retain facts based on age can probably be more strongly attributed to their internal biases from their pre-acquired knowledge than an inability to learn.
Maybe in some part I'm arguing semantics ("either way, what appears to be a decline still occurs"), but to say that cognitive decline happens sooner when related to aptitude for maths as opposed to aptitude for biology is a little silly without a citation. Would love to read these articles if you have resources.
It's probably a mistake to write off an older adult's ability to learn. I would lean to heavily favour Elon's anecdote [4], "I do kinda feel like my head is full! My context switching penalty is high and my process isolation is not what it used to be. Frankly, though, I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying." --- more knowledge means you have the ability to be more discerning which can be more computationally expensive (and take longer), but it doesn't necessarily offset ability to learn. In fact, you could probably make a convincing argument that with proper pattern recognition you can learn the right things more quickly.
As a clinician research showing cognitive abilities varying with age is unsurprising. Unfortunately the full report is hidden behind a paywall. The article mentions a plan to make the datasets used in the study publicly accessible. That's great but that idea should also be applied to the findings described in the article.
Now that I'm becoming "old", the effects of aging on cognition are personally all the more relevant but even long ago it was clear to me that aging was associated with cognitive decline in some respects and gain in others.
The research confirms ability to absorb and recall random pieces of information is greater in youth than later years. One example is the common complaint of people in their 50's and beyond of delayed recall of names of people or objects as though their "circuits" are not working as quickly as earlier in life.
The article points out the late peak of accumulated knowledge, which is consistent with my own observations. However, I believe this is not just a matter of knowing static facts, but represents the subtle element of extended experience that's difficult to define or measure via tests like the WAIS used in the research. The contribution of experience is from problem solving over long duration, conferring the ability to better predict the outcome of particular actions or decision paths.
The value of experience is probably what is meant when referring to the wisdom of the old, though given the frequent discussions on HN of ageism in tech fields, the benefits of wisdom may be unappreciated.
Great article. From the perspective of someone who's getting older, you have to come to grips with the fact that your mind and brain change in ability just like your body does. At first it can be frustrating, and you see it only as a negative. But strangely, having your brain change a bit in terms of its speed or its ability to memorize and recall things can actually give you a new perspective on solving problems and thinking about things in general. I'm not saying it's a bed of roses, for the most part it's a loss. I'm just saying you can learn to accept that and move on with the capabilities you have at the moment, rather than wallow in self-pity and see every cup as half empty.
There's also the fact that as you get older you simply know more, you've seen more patterns and data. You're like a machine learning algorithm that's been trained on a larger corpus.
There's a difference between slowing down and losing cognitive abilities. It's one thing to not be able to solve very complex problems anymore and another to not remember how to use a toothbrush. I don't think anyone's really disputing that we're on average more capable in 20s-40s.
Whilst I agree with the title of this post, it would be nice to have some evidence, or at least some examples of the sort of things that experience brings.
My understanding of the research is summed up in this paper[1]. Which states:
> The most important changes in cognition with normal aging are declines in performance on cognitive tasks that require one to quickly process or transform information to make a decision, including measures of speed of processing, working memory, and executive cognitive function. Cumulative knowledge and experiential skills are well maintained into advanced age.
I'm happy for anyone who is productive past normal retirement age, but it's important to be aware of what happens to our minds as we get older. I think the examples in the comments are exceptions that prove the rule. The reason for the dearth of older hackers is the same reason there are few people running marathons at age 60 or 70: As we age, our bodies and minds degrade. Exercise, nutrition, and (probably) drugs can slow the decline, but we don't yet have the technology to turn back the clock.
The most depressing graph I've seen is figure 1[1] in Images of the Cognitive Brain Across Age and Culture[2]. It shows how our cognitive abilities decline soon after we reach maturity. Starting in our 20s, we lose about 6 IQ points per decade; more in our 70s and 80s. That means someone in the top 1% in high school (IQ 135) would be down to average intelligence by the time they were in their 80s.
On the bright side, the decline in raw cognitive horsepower is offset by gains in knowledge. In fact, knowledge more than offsets it in most disciplines. Our peak productivity is usually in our 40's and declines much more slowly than one would expect[3].
Still, if you want to keep building cool stuff when you're older, it's important to prepare now. The best thing you can do is stay healthy and active. To return to the marathon analogy: A 55 year-old might not set a world record, but with the right training, nutrition, and possibly performance-enhancing drugs, they can beat >95% of people half their age.
Finally, to everyone mentioned in this thread: Well done! I hope to follow your example.
While there were smaller declines in things like remembering names, one theory was that what we know gets consolidated, allowing older brains to make greater leaps in logic more quickly. While older brains are distracted more easily, one study suggested people learn to compensate by using the left and right brain together to maintain focus and progress, and this results in bringing more "firepower" to bear on the tasks at hand.
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