Older and smarter shock in new study
A new American study has undermined the common theory that the human brain is at its most powerful between 18 and 26 and instead demonstrated that verbal skills in particular increased for at least 20 years beyond that time.
The study was made of the records of 4,300 US ex-servicemen who had been given intelligence tests when they joined the military at around 20 and were then tested two decades later. It showed the real changes in intelligence were more marked and more complex than had been previously realised.
It was believed by the key researchers that the most likely reason for improvements in verbal skills for older people was basically practice. Older people had to solve far more social and practical problems than younger people and had been forced to develop more complex language skills.
The development of the language skills more than compensates for the slow and steady loss of brain cells that modern medical scanning techniques have confirmed starts in the late 20s. The new research has contradicted the theory that intelligence peaks in early adulthood and then begins a slow and inevitable decline.
Commenting on the study Lorraine Tyler, head of the centre for speech, language and the brain at Cambridge University, England, said that “when we image the brain we do see physical atrophy with age but brain function can be preserved. This shows how plastic the brain is. It adapts and changes with age and other challenges”.
