Brains Work Best At Age of 39 267
Scientists at the University of California Los Angeles are reporting that while some people may think "life begins at 40," all it seems to do is slow down. According to recent research, at age 39 our brain reaches its peak speed, and it's all downhill after that. "The loss of a fatty skin that coats the nerve cells, called neurons, during middle age causes the slowdown, experts say. The coating acts as insulation, similar to the plastic covering on an electrical cable, and allows for fast bursts of signals around the body and brain. When the sheath deteriorates, signals passing along the neurons in the brain slow down. This means reaction times in the body are slower too."
Not a First Post (Score:5, Funny)
I'm getting old...
FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot pseudo-science (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe older people don't take finger-tapping seriously. Maybe younger people are far more likely to have played computer games.
I met a man who was 55 who told me that he didn't get a good score on a computer pinball game he had just begun playing because he was old. Two weeks later, when I saw him again, he said his score had tripled.
Quote from the article linked by Slashdot: "Significantly, the research suggests that the myelin breakdown process should also reduce all other brain functions for which performance speed is dependent on higher AP frequencies, including memory;
That's wild over-interpretation. There is no "should" in science. There is only theory, and it is necessary to emphasize that theories are only that, theories.
Re:FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot pseudo-science (Score:4, Funny)
So in a nutshell you're saying I'm not too old and slow to get a first post.
Funny. (Score:2)
Read what Sockatume had to say below: Bad reporting, more like [slashdot.org].
Anyone who practices finger-tapping will become a faster finger-tapper. Probably the results of the study only show that younger people are more likely to have played computer games. Practicing motor coordination improves response times.
In my grandparent post I meant to say that "should" indicates a theory, not that nothing is known with more sureness than theory.
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Re:FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot pseudo-science (Score:5, Informative)
I think that the word you seek with regard to their interpretation of the results is "hypothesis". Were it a Theory, then a claim of over-interpretation would need citation.
This is besides the fact that the "word" over-interpretation doesn't make sense. Try "wild speculation" or "gross misinterpretation" next time.
As to the There is no "should" in science thing: try learning about science one day. Any scientific hypothesis must be able to make certain predictions. Predictions are worded in the subjunctive or conditional, depending on the subject matter and placement of the word. The use of the word "should" in relation to science is quite appropriate for the purposes of prediction.
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I'm feeling old too, but yet worn out. This means if I want to back to college, I should do it now at age 37, while my brain is near peak capacity, rather than wait until I'm a doddering 40-something. ;-)
- posted with LYNX, a Commodore 64 web browser (using 2 kbit/s modem)
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Definitely don't wait, because after 40 your...whatchamacallit...doesn't...that thing...um, lunchtime?
Re:Not a First Post (Score:4, Funny)
You have plenty of time, that '39' is in hexadecimal!
...and they said.... (Score:2)
Re:...and they said.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is No "one" point where the body stops working. Different systems age at different rates:
- the reproductive system peaks somewhere around age 16 or 17 (lowest risk of birth defects) ;-)
- the *desire* for sex peaks just prior to menopause for women (circa age 35) and apparently never ends for men
- flexibility (ala gymanasts and skaters) peaks at 15 and ends around 25
- reaction time peaks at 30
- and now it's revealed that the human brain peaks just prior to 40 - after which the neurons' tendrils start falling apart (like an old rubber hose).
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- reaction time peaks at 30
That's cool to know. In online FPS games, people always whine about the reflexes of the 12-17 year olds and so on, but I've always felt like it was because older gamers just didn't devote the time into games to get as good. Now that the crowd of mid-20 gamers has had years of experience in these games, they are still the majority at the top level of competition. (There are exceptions, but I'm just pointing out that once you are past 17, that doesn't mean you won't be able to compete with younger gamers an
Re:...and they said.... (Score:4, Funny)
- flexibility (ala gymanasts and skaters) peaks at 15 and ends around 25
Flexiblity ENDS at 25? Is that some sort of pun? I never was very limber, but I'm over 40 and it's not like rigor mortis has set in yet.
Dick works best... (Score:5, Funny)
...at age 18.
I can't wait for the spam that will advertise me an 18 year old dick, a 39 year old brain, and a 65 year old bank account.
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Unfortunately in the current economy that 65 year old will have to wait until they're 95.
Re:Dick works best... (Score:5, Funny)
"Unfortunately the penis is optimally functional at age 18 ... if only we could somehow align these two."
Obviously not, we are capable of thinking with one and not with the other at any given moment!
Re:Dick works best... (Score:5, Funny)
This explains why slashdoters are so smart.
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no brain today.
Was it good for you?
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Obviously not, we are capable of thinking with one and not with the other at any given moment!
The problem is we only have enough blood to run one at a time.
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Obviously not, we are capable of thinking with one and not with the other at any given moment!
The problem is we only have enough blood to run one at a time.
Cue on-the-rag jokes here. On second though, no, please, NO!
Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, AFAIK, myelin breakdown due to a malfunctioning immune system is very much related to diseases like MS and ALS, among others.
Which begs the question, if we could fix those disorders including restoring the myelin around the nerve fibers, could we keep people's brains working better for longer?
Re:Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:5, Interesting)
I expect this to suddenly be "news" in about five years.
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Can these substances be used to help restore lost motor function due to the immune system attacking the myelin sheath of motor neurons? If so it should basically fix things like ALS, MS, MMN... I assume not, as those diseases are (to the extent of my knowledge) treated with totally different approaches?
Re:Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the research on the 'racetam family of bioactives has been done in Russia, and because of this there are both mistrusts and language barriers to overcome, but in doing so I discovered some pretty massively interesting studies all about specifically myelin sheath issues. So, since these substances are freely available in the US without any kind of prescription (unlike Russia, interestingly), I purchased a few and fed them to my mother, who is in the last couple of stages of post polio syndrome, which among other things (to put it in a nutshell) severely inhibits myelin effectiveness in nerve sheath maintenance. When she started the regimen a year ago, she couldn't walk at all and had great difficulty grasping things with her left hand, and was also in tremdous pain.
Just a week ago she and I walked about six blocks to a restaurant, and then back. She can grasp things in her left hand fairly well at this point, and is in very little pain.
I don't know myelin "helping" nootropics are the holy grail of neurological disorders, but they appear to have helped at least one person tremendously.
Re:Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not dissing you or your mother, but that could have been the placebo effect. Without a control group, we'll never know. I'm happy for you in any case, and I would say that if nothing else we need more research here.
Interesting article [sciencenews.org]. This drug "reboots" the immune system, allowing myelin sheathes to reform. I'm waiting to see if these results can be duplicated; if so this stuff might actually be the holy grail you speak of.
Re:Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:4, Interesting)
The placebo effect on brain development/neurogenesis/related is huge. IIRC the research I read was comparing "you will get perfect again", both with and without some drug (Valium?) to "you might get better, but you won't be as good as before" with and without the drug.
No one ever got completely perfect again, but people who were told that they would fared better. These were reproduced a couple of times, and MRIs showed significant (yes, statistically significant) neurogenesis difference, although not by a wide margin.
Note: I'm now completely offtopic, talking about loss of blood supply and permanent brain damage while TFA is talking about myelination.
Re:Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:5, Insightful)
could we keep people's brains working better for longer?
To be honest, given that we have no real definition of what "intelligence" is, to say that people get less intelligent in some way once they get past 40 is reaching a bit. Granted there is a physical effect being observed, but people have lost significant hunks of their brains with little detrimental effect.
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Obviously we need to program our nanites to do myelin deposition in the nerve cells. And while they're there, they can carry off any amyloid plaques to the intestine for disposal.
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You mean raises the question.
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Re:Relates to neurological disease as well (Score:4, Insightful)
Interestingly, AFAIK, myelin breakdown due to a malfunctioning immune system is very much related to diseases like MS and ALS, among others.
Which brings up a point - no two people are alike. No two people age the same way. I know guys fifteen years younger than me who look older than I am.
My uncle died of ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease). Most people are dead of this disease before age 65, he didn't even show symptoms until his eighties.
Spme people's brains peak at age 30, some people's brains peak at 50. To say everyone's brains are the same at any given age is stupidly ludicrous.
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That's not what the zombies say. Brains are brains, man.
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diseases like MS and ALS
We all know that Microsoft is a disease, but what the hell is ALS?
Midlife crisis (Score:5, Funny)
This is probably what leads to a midlife crisis. One day you wake up smarter than you've ever been and go "holy shit, I've been a jackass all these years". Then you go and do something about it.
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That, or something else mentioned here [wikipedia.org].
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With three weeks to go until my 39th birthday.... (Score:5, Funny)
...I have to say I expected a little more ;-)
My response to this... (Score:2)
All I have to say is, "Yeah!" quickly followed by, "Oh, crap!"
Speed of life and life itself are different things (Score:5, Insightful)
some people may think "life begins at 40," all it seems to do is slow down
There is no contradiction, IMO. I know people who are so fast they don't have time to live, they are always five minutes late for something. Life begins when you can slow down, relax and think.
Coding too (Score:4, Insightful)
But that might also be because by age 40 you'd probably have diverted into management if you were no good at coding.
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Life begins when you can slow down, relax and think.
Unfortunately, for many of us, by the time we can slow down and relax, our thinking capability is already sliding. I think that's the paradox they're trying to refer to.
An illustrative tale (Score:3, Interesting)
Old guys can still get in their licks. Literally.
I'm an old fart. I was at a Renaissance Faire, getting a big kick out of watching 3 or 4 tough-acting, frat-boy types, half-drunk, trying to impress the little hotties in their posse. They were trying to ring the bell at that old carnival game where you hit a teeter-totter thing to launch a metal pellet upwards.
I don't think any of them had ever done any physical labor. Swinging a sledge isn't all tha
speed isn't that important (Score:5, Insightful)
Once, over a period of a week when I was in my twenties, I got repeatedly destroyed at chess by a guy in his eighties. Seriously, I have never been so utterly unable to outthink anyone in my life, and I'm a pretty good chess player.
He started playing chess as a boy, and while he did tend to ramble on a bit, if his mind wasn't as sharp as it used to be, it must have once been able to cut diamonds...
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Were you playing speed chess? The article was talking about brain speed. Regardless, I think it's obvious that he was better than you because he has more experience playing chess. I don't think chess is some objective measure of one's brain power. People with abnormally gifted minds might have an advantage at chess, but beating someone at chess doesn't necessarily mean you have a more powerful brain than them.
Re:Speed versus flexibility (Score:4, Interesting)
The New Yorker had an interesting article a few weeks back about young vs old geniuses, that your post made me think of. Let me see if I can find it....
Ah, here it is [newyorker.com]
From reading various things, I've come to the conclusion that brains are hard to generalize. Even assuming one of the million things that can go wrong with them doesn't, in fact, happen, they still develop differently from individual to individual, and that what we presume to be the normal way that people's brains "age" isn't necessarily so.
Myelin supplement scams are next (Score:3, Informative)
Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Being 41, I was rather dismayed to see this article. Even more upsetting was the fact that I then proceeded to left click on it, rather than my ususal middle-click to open it in a tab.
Oh no! It's starting already!
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See if you can guess when I learned that you can middle-click to open a link in a new tab. ;)
Thanks for the tip; that'll save me a fair bit of time and clicking during the day.
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Seriously, we have a 100+ key keyboard for the left hand, and 3 whole friggin buttons for my right hand? No wonder I started out life right handed and ended up becoming ambidextrous.
At least we'll be able to look good while clicking (Score:2)
I hear there's a great new clothing store for people our age. It's called Forever 41.
Damn (Score:2)
I'll be 39 in 2 months, and I feel like I hit the bottom, not the peak.
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More than likely you are now wise enough to know that you don't know everything.
Brain works worst... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahem ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Science at its best.
CC.
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Re:Ahem ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still _BAD_ science.
Bad reporting, more like (Score:5, Insightful)
That story is a creation of the media which have decided to run with "brains work best at age of 39" for no readily appreciable fucking reason. Next time, hacks, save some effort and just put a bunch of words in a hat and make up the story based on those.
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That story is a creation of the media which have decided to run with "brains work best at age of 39" for no readily appreciable fucking reason. Next time, hacks, save some effort and just put a bunch of words in a hat and make up the story based on those.
Thank you, sir. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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... they base their result on a sample of 72 persons within an age range from 23 to 80.
Science at its best.
CC.
They were the only ones in the hospital at the time.
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Okay, so maybe they are a little wrong and the actual age of brainy awesomeness is some other number between 35-45. That doesn't make the whole study wrong. What is interesting is that the age they found was 39 instead of, say, 23. We shouldn't start publishing their results in schoolbooks all over the world yet, but the results are interesting and invite further research on the subject.
Don't expect EVERY study to involve thousands of people, that would be way too expensive. Instead you check interesting hy
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Don't expect EVERY study to involve thousands of people...
Just the good ones.
Re:Ahem ... (Score:5, Funny)
... they base their result on a sample of 72 persons within an age range from 23 to 80.
What do you expect? The researcher was in his 40's. He was much better a few years back...
Just the speed of reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I have read, this only appears to apply to the speed of thought, which impacts on our reaction speeds. This would chime with most people's experience of ageing.
What I would be interesting in is whether it actually has a knock-on effect on the quality of cognitive ability. Does thinking faster equal thinking better?
Also, I wonder if the increase in experience is enough to overcome the reduction in reaction speeds. For example a 17 year old may have a great reaction speed, but that doesn't automatically make them a better driver than a 40 year-old with 20+ years of predicting the motion of objects travelling at speed and planning accordingly.
Re:Just the speed of reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
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Testing the speed of thought based on reaction times reminds me how back in the day they used to test IQ by figuring out how many different colors you could see or frequencies you could hear. The logic being that these things are rooted in the brain and therefore must be a direct measurement of the brains power.
I think a more accurate discription would be that the speed of electrical signals in the brain peaks at 39. We don't even know how that relates to the actual rates of cognition (or even if there is
That explains a lot! (Score:2)
The birth rate among people aged 40 and above drops significantly. Might there be a connection between the brain working better and not having children? (And let's leave Sarah Palin out of this one...)
Why is it deteriorating, though (Score:2)
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Myelin was discovered in 1854, and I don't think it's been measured in humans for too long. Any study in this direction will be pure statistical noise, and even if there were tons of data it would be biased by the improvement in measuring techniques.
This is similar to the claims that have been made in the past decade that men are becoming less fertile. I don't know where I read this, but it turns out that these claims are based on comparisons between pears and apples: old data refer to total sperm count, wh
College NOW (Score:2)
So if I want to back to college, I should do it now at age 37, while my brain is near peak capacity, rather than wait until I'm a doddering 40-something. ;-)
- posted with LYNX, a Commodore 64 web browser (using 2 kbit/s modem)
What about exercise? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is well known that regular intense exercise has a profound impact on aging and brain performance.
I can't take a report serious that doesn't take the effect of exercise into consideration and doesn't even mention it.
So does 39 apply to complete couch potatoes? Average Americans with little exercise? Athletes?
Like wires? (Score:2)
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I think the idea is that data can move faster across a well-shielded wire and will pick up more interference and thus need to slow down for error correction.
I know this because I am almost 39.
The brain works "best"? (Score:2)
Fastest != best. With no software to run, a processor's clock speed is mostly useless.
Fatty skin? (Score:4, Funny)
Loss of fatty skin? When I hit middle age, that's when I started getting fatty skin.
Not mine. (Score:3, Interesting)
Brains Work Best At Age of 39
I was in a bad car wreck at age 24, dropped ten points on my IQ. Lucky for me it was 142 before the wreck.
It seems to have gotten progressively better since then, until a few years ago when it kind of reached a plateau; I don't think I'm as creative as I was a few years ago.
When the sheath deteriorates, signals passing along the neurons in the brain slow down. This means reaction times in the body are slower too.
That doesn't mean you're not as smart, it means your reflexes are slower. You're born as intelligent as you'll ever be; your capacity to learn is at its maximum. However, you are also as ignorant as you'll ever be, as you know absolutely nothing whatever.
A middle aged professor I once knew was fond of telling his students "I've forgotten more than you've ever learned".
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I have no heart disease, my mental impairment came from being hit in the face with a three quarter ton puckup truck travelling 70 MPH while I was in a Gremlin doing 50 in the opposite direction.
I know what a cockroach feels like when you step on him.
the comments here are negative (Score:2)
indicating the average age of the slashdotter reading this story is over 39
Fastest != Best (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because older brains don't necessarily work as fast as younger ones doesn't mean they don't work better. Plenty of better thinking is slower than the fastest stuff, like jumping to conclusions. And the older brains have lots more information and habits that can be more powerful than the newer ones. This is known to humans as "wisdom".
Besides, just getting to the wrong answer faster is not "better".
Just some more reasons people say "age and guile will beat youth and talent any day". Even if younger people just zip around without realizing it.
lost in translation (Score:2)
If the article is about the loss of the fatty sheath, why mention what nerve cells are called?
The base UCLA article explains that the fatty sheath (myelin) is around nerve fibers (axon
This just in, those who eat a lowfat diet are (Score:2)
Stupid!
So, go ahead and eat a nice prime rib medium well.
Man you can't win, what's good for the heart isn't good for the brain? I think the lesson here is keep everything in balance. Don't eat ultra a low fat diet.
Nobel Prizes (Score:2)
Noise (Score:4, Interesting)
Being 44 years old now, I have noticed that I'm not able to think as clearly as I did in my early thirties. In my self analysis, however, I find the biggest culprit is "brain noise." When I think about something, irrelevant associations will pop in with much greater frequency, distracting me from "pure" concentration. Which makes me wonder if it's simply a natural consequence of life: more and more detail is stored away in my head. A younger person with a relatively "empty" head isn't as distracted by all the useless dreck and is able to form thoughts more cleanly.
Even as I type this post, my lifetime of experience keep popping in with tangentially relevant information, not to mention songs triggered by phrases, movie quotes and other useless crapola. :D
I've actually wondered if there are mental exercises such as meditation that might help to quiet all the noise.
Re:Noise (Score:4, Informative)
Vipassana or insight meditation is what you are looking for.
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In my self analysis, however, I find the biggest culprit is "brain noise." When I think about something, irrelevant associations will pop in with much greater frequency, distracting me from "pure" concentration.
I observe the same effect - I'm 38 - however I think it's simply exaustion from the lack of sleep and brain-downtime. The older you grow the more structured your every day life becomes and the more compact and effective your calendar becomes and the less you notice exaustion, simply because you have
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When I think about something, irrelevant associations will pop in with much greater frequency, distracting me from "pure" concentration.
I've actually wondered if there are mental exercises such as meditation that might help to quiet all the noise.
I know the kind of noise you're talking about, and I would recommend a different approach - rather than learning a technique to "block it out", instead learn techniques for effective brain "multi-tasking". You can keep a very strong focus on the topic at hand, as well as let the useless dreck wander through without interrupting you (but if something useful floats by, you can grab it and run with it).
My recommendation for this would be to overly excite your brain for a bit with LOTS of useless extra informa
Oh, great .... (Score:2)
Sure, not even 4 weeks after I turn 39 they come out with this.
Now I have scientific proof that it's all down-hill from here. :-P
Cheers
Jack Benny (Score:2)
rj
My first thought after reading the summary... (Score:2)
bad joke (Score:2)
If true, how do you explain mathematicians? (Score:4, Insightful)
Historically, their most significant work is done before age 30.
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That's probably true for most people. After 30, most folks have settled into raising a family, etc. and that takes time away from work.
Response time does not mean everything... (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be slower, but I hope the experiences accumulated through the last 39 years still payoff after that.
It's like a higher latency link doesn't mean worse if bandwidth is high enough.
Another analogy is that the CPU clock rate is not the answer of everything. The cache, architecture and everything also play a role.
It's more like you should shift from NetBurst to something else at around 39.
Important research (Score:3, Informative)
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Ha ha woo hoo, things are still on the up! Brain that is.......................the rest is sadly flaccid!
Thankfully they now have drugs [wikipedia.org] for that.
Re:Guess I should quit playing Brain Age (Score:4, Funny)
Not necessarily. It is more reason to NOT vote for McCain (as if there aren't enough already). Obama is also older than 39. We need to have a candidate who is exactly the minimum age of 35, that way we can vote him out his second term before his brain slows down!