Brain remains ‘sharp’ until age 60, study finds

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The brain remains sharp into middle age, contrary to popular assumptions that mental processing speed slows after the 20s and 30s. This is what research published in the journal Nature Human Behavior suggests.

The study of 1.2 million people, ages 10 to 80, found that mental speed remained relatively stable between ages 30 and 60 — but caution in decision-making tends to increase with age.

Researchers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany used an online task to estimate people’s decision-making time.

They showed participants a series of images online and asked them to put them into two categories – good or bad – by pressing different buttons to do so.

They suggest that the task involves distinct processes, including mental speed (roughly defined as the rate at which we process information to make a decision), decision caution (which looks at the time it takes to consider information before making a decision), and then the time involved in actually pushing the button.

Using mathematical models, the researchers were able to estimate the speed with which participants completed each part of the process.

They found that while the average time to complete the task as a whole worsened after age 20, the mental speed of processing information did not begin to slow down until age 60.

The study found that:

  • People under 18 were less cautious and more willing to give up precision for speed;
  • Caution in decisions increased between 18 and 65 years old;
  • People also took longer to press the respective button the older they were.

Scientists admit that there are likely to be many different processes involved in decision making and say it is possible that other factors, such as previously formed opinions, also affect the speed of decision making.

“For much of typical human life and work careers, our results challenge the widespread notion of an age-related slowing of mental speed,” the study concludes.

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