Ayala HerbertGerman scientists have challenged the view that the speed of mental processes in the brain slows down after the age of 20. Instead, they have shown that it remains at the same level until the age of 60. However, it is true that the speed of making certain decisions, as such, decreases with age, but this is not due to the slowing down of the “gray matter”.
It is widely known that the speed of cognitive processes in our brain begins to slow down in our youth, passing its peak around the age of 20. Indeed, many people can recall that in their 20s, various tasks seemed to be thought about faster than in more mature years. Various scientific studies also attest to this.
Scientists from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) do not deny this, but after conducting their own study, they found a new cause of cognitive slowing, not related to the speed of the brain. They presented their findings in the journal Nature Human Behavior. The study involved more than 1.2 million people.
The experiment was conducted online. In the task of volunteers was to classify certain words and images that appeared on the screen, by pressing the “right” keys on the keyboard. And what did the researchers see? That this response time was indeed slower in subjects over the age of 20 compared to younger participants.
However, according to experts, this was hardly due to the slowing down of their cognitive processes. By using mathematical models (Bayesian hierarchical modeling), the scientists concluded that such a phenomenon lies beyond the speed of the brain and can be associated with other factors. First of all, with the fact that with age people who have gained certain life experience become more cautious and in principle slower to make certain decisions.
And also with age a person’s physical reflexes slow down, so he or she may react slower to something (for example, pressing buttons on a keyboard) for purely physiological reasons. But after the age of 60, cognitive processes in the brain really start to slow down. Although in different people it happens in different ways: someone has a degree of “mental” speed is still very high, someone – quite low.
The reasons for this are still unknown to scientists – they hope to get an answer to this question in future studies. In addition, the work of experts has shown that the speed of the brain is at about the same level in very different groups of people. It depends little on gender, race or level of education. Scientists, however, emphasize that for the final conclusions need, as usual, additional research and study of the speed of response during the execution of other tasks by the subjects
