-
.
- Ελληνικά
Have you "hit 60" and feel you need more time to answer a question, make a decision or react to a challenge of the moment?
How about you, when you were in your 20s your mind was "razor sharp"?
A study published in Nature Human Behaviour answers what may be happening to you.
The brain's reaction times tend to slow down as we get older but according to researchers at the German Institute of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, this is not due to a slowdown in the speed at which it processes information.
"It is because your response time is hampered by factors beyond your cognitive ('cognitive') acuity," explains institute researcher Mischa von Krause.
And he adds that "our research now shows that this slowdown is not due to a decrease in cognitive processing speed. By age three, the speed of information processing in the context of the study we focused on hardly changes."
But as we get older we become less impulsive and our physical reflexes start to decline from age 20 onwards. This slows down our reactions to the external environment but "this is not because your brain becomes less sharp," the researchers point out.
"The slower reactions are explained by the fact that we become more cautious when making decisions as we get older, trying to learn from past mistakes and avoid making more. At the same time, our sensory skills, such as pressing a button to a particular stimulus during a test, slow down with age," explains Dr von Krause.
The study
The study analysed data on over 1.2 million people who had taken part in an online experiment to assess their reactions to a brain test. Participants had to categorize a series of words and images that flashed on a computer screen by pressing the correct button.
Response time began to slow down after the age of 20. But analyzing the data more closely, the scientists noticed that the slower responses were due to exogenous factors rather than the brain's ability to process the information. The cognitive process of deciding on the right answer did not begin to slow down until after the age of 60.
"Authors of previous studies have typically interpreted slower reaction times in older people as an indication of cognitive slowing," says Dr. von Krause. "Through a mathematical model we were able to show that there are other causes for the slow responses that can better explain the situation," he adds, stressing that "just because we age does not necessarily mean that we start to forget."
According to him, while a general age-related decline in mental speed was observed starting around age 60, a large variation in cognitive speed was also found across age groups. That is, there were many older people who still had very high levels of mental speed.
"Why some people manage to maintain high mental speed even in old age is a very interesting hypothesis for future research," he says.
Source: ygeiamou.gr
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
