A study in the journal Psychological Science reveals that the brain works differently at different ages. The study, as reported in Medical Xpress, suggests that typically the brain peaks a certain function at the age of 20.
But instead of what was previously thought -- that basically brain function is all downhill from that age -- the new study indicates different parts of the brain peak at different ages and stages of life.
Laura Germaine, the author of the study, is a postdoc in psychiatric and neurodevelopment genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital. She said the study indicates that there is no one "peak" time of brain function during a normal lifetime.
Germaine said the study took a while to complete because of the relatively small number of people in the age range of post-college to 65 years old who would participate in the study.
The study focuses on how cognitive skills evolve over the years. Germaine and co-author of the study, Joshua Hartshorne, a postdoc in Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, were able to finally find the subjects. They recruited the participants through their websites, gameswithwords.org and testmybrain.org.
The study included results derived from more than 50,000 participants and the researchers found the results indicated different skills were at their most efficient at different ages. They tested areas like memory, short-term memory and processing information.
The study showed short-term memory peaks around age 25 then begins to drop at age 35. On the other hand, information processing peaks at age 19 and starts to drop off rapidly.
The researchers concluded more work needs to be done to learn more about brain function and peak performance.
