Older brains compare well – just takes longer

A Swinburne University of Technology study in Melbourne has shown that when memory function is checked, the accuracy of the older brain compares well with the younger brain – it just takes a little longer.

The study compared brain activity in men aged between 59 and 67 with men aged between 20 and 39, as they carried out memory tasks ranging from the simple to the complex.

The more complicated tasks tested short-term recognition of images and while both groups had similar levels of accuracy, the older participants took longer to respond.

The findings published in the latest issue of Brain and Cognition showed that the more difficult the task, the more activity crossed the brain of the older adults who still often came to the same conclusion as their younger counterparts.

With simpler memory tasks, the study found that the older brains used less activity than the younger ones.

It was also revealed that the 15 older and 14 younger adults who took part used different regions of their brains to perform the same recognition decision tasks.