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When people over 65 show losses in their short-term memory and comprehension, it’s no surprise. But a new study claims that a general cognitive decline starts to set in as early as age 45. The research is in the British Medical Journal.
Scientists tracked more than 5,000 men and 2,000 women, between ages 45 and 70, for 10 years starting in 1997.
The study subjects were tested three times over the 10 years, for memory, vocabulary and comprehension skills. For instance, as a test of comprehension they were asked to recall as many words and animal names beginning with the letter “S” as possible.
The participants’ scores went down in all categories except vocabulary. Both men and women who were between 45 and 49 at the start of the study experienced a 3.6 percent decline in mental ability over the decade.
Research shows that active lifestyles, both mentally and physically, slow down brain aging. Scientists thus feel it’s important to know when mental decline typically starts so that people who are getting older—and that’s all of us—can be encouraged to get active sooner rather than later. And have a decent chance to find those car keys.
—Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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Add CommentComments here and on other sites show this is quickly getting blown out of proportions. Basically this study is the equivalent of saying the older you are the more likely you are to get sick. While true is says little about the health of any group much less individuals or what can be done to improve said health. So let's back off on the Logan Run style philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an interesting study - thanks to the British Medical Journal for free access to much of the research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with avatar42 that there is a real risk that these results be used to justify age discrimination in employment practices.
While I have no qualifications (other than experience in unrelated data analyses), there are a couple of possible issues I must raise.
The study requested general participation from British civil service workers. Studies performed on select populations may be skewed by specific characteristics of those populations. In this case, I don’t have any supporting studies or data about the selected study group, but having worked in state government for a few years, my impression is that civil service employees in general tend to value job security and benefits over earnings and career advancement opportunities. Despite this, government employees can suffer long term frustration due to bureaucratic procedures. I also understand that British society is often considered to be more rigidly stratified by American visitors.
The participants' special characteristics may have contributed to the results, as in tests of Reasoning, Memory, Phonemic fluency, Semantic fluency and Vocabulary, age diminishment of abilities was greatest for reasoning in men. It could be argued, for example, that these findings indicate primarily that, after many years in unchallenging job positions with limited opportunity for achievement, men’s reasoning abilities are gradually diminished. In fact, the greater diminishment of reasoning in men rather than women might be a function of aggressive male tendencies thwarted by bureaucratic career restrictions, resulting in increased frustration for male civil service workers.
As best I could determine, there was no attempt to distinguish results for those who eventually develop severe dementia such as Alzheimer's disease from those who did not. As a result, it may be possible that the results are skewed by the severe diminishment of Alzheimer's sufferers. For example, similar statistical results might be obtained if a significant number of the sample population were developing Alzheimer's symptoms, producing severe dementia, while the remainder of the sample group suffered little diminishment of cognitive abilities. Again, I can’t support this possibility with any references or data.
(continued)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe researchers' stated primary objective was to determine the onset age of dementia effects – they may have contributed valuable data in that determination. However, generalizing the specific results of this study to conclude that the general population’s cognitive abilities diminish beginning at age 45 may be invalid as well as unfair to the growing population of older workers.
Nice comments, jtdwyer. SciAm could do a much better job balancing the economic necessity of catchy headlines and accessible prose with its journalistic duty to educate the public on the statistical significance of the studies it reports. In this case, at the very least the headline should have read "may start earlier" rather than the completely unjustified "starts earlier."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs your comments demonstrate, the headline is technically false. And it's not just semantics, but rather a falsehood that reinforces public misconceptions about the scientific method, something that SciAm should try harder to avoid doing.
(I am a HUGE SciAm fan, btw. But this happens all too frequently in shorter articles like this, and there's no good reason for it.)
Arbitrary starting point; I think; I'm not sure; I'm 65!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI submit that younger people are more concerned with learning things for the first time - i.e. reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOlder people who've been around the traps are more likely to have acquired sufficient knowledge for their daily lives, and now be more concerned with applying their understanding towards complex multi-variate decisions about larger matters.
A little like the argument that older people are slower to make decisions because they want to be right - older people already have a head full of knowledge so spend more time filtering through that seeking to connect the appropriate pieces towards the optimum result, often in projects involving other people, so the complexities and possible permutations/combinations become enormous.
A little kid is pleased if they can carry a glass of water without spilling it - so I'll suggest that higher order skills can not be measured in the same way as basic learning, e.g. with memory lists and reaction times.
What's the saying - the beginner learns the rules; the experienced knows how to apply them; the expert knows when to ignore them.
Like crossing the road - living here for 20 years, I know the traffic light timings and when to expect gaps, so cross the road when I hear the silence of the gap. First time visitors don't know better, so follow the rules and stand non-plussed at the pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change. They follow the rules - I know when to ignore them.
Sure, the inevitable cognitive decline of old people may explain some of their voting habits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you explain your own voting habits, Dolmance?
I'll make a wild guess and blame willful ignorance and stupidity, typical characteristics of a liberal.
Today's Scientific American does not hold a candle to yesterday's.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if these findings apply to publications like Scientific American? Know how old is SA?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human brain requires a highly disproportionate amount of the heart's cardiac out put of blood in order to maintain itself and function efficiently. Any factor which diminishes this blood flow to the brain has, as a result, a disproportionately deleterious affect on the aforementioned. With age, comes a natural decrease in cardiac output. Factors which ameliorate or exacerbate this natural decline in cardiac output will, as a result, have a disproportionate effect on mental acuity and the maintenance of intellectual integrity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@nagnostic, Leave it to a fascist to use the word Liberal, another word for free, as an insult. But I do appreciate you illustrating the point of the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost "journalists" write their articles on their smartphones, today. That's why they are so short. That's also why Microsoft is going to make all PC's work like smartphones in Window 8. ;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Today's Scientific American does not hold a candle to yesterday's."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[applause]
This is an asinine conclusion. Of course they will note a decline from age 45 on since that's when they started the study. Had they started the study at age 25, they should have noticed a decline starting at age 25. The fact is, mental, as well as physical, condition deteriorates after late teens, early twenties. We all coast downhill after that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'blame willful ignorance and stupidity, typical characteristics of a liberal' - and failing persuasive logic, resorting to personal insults appear to be typical characteristics of a conservative ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study should boost efforts to devalue older life - as in, "give them a pain pill" and save the expensive medical intervention for the more valuable younger people (by setting a higher value to younger life, “big brother” can pretend what they will do is not rationing, or blatant discrimination or a death panel, - it is just how the numbers work out).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo surprise this study comes out of England. England has government controlled medicine (socialized medicine), and with their expanded welfare state, they have too few pulling the cart and too many in for the "free" ride (as Thatcher is credited for saying, "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.")
Richard Carlson
This is yet another "study" that proves nothing at all. The first problem is the actual tests being any sort of cognitive skill in the first place. Recall as many animal names beinging with S as possible? Maybe if the 49 year old was a vetenarian or zoolist that would work. These people have 20 to 40 years of experience in careers of choice. I suspect if you asked a electrical engineer to list off all of the types of resistors and capacitors he knows he could name most of them. Ask a doctor all of the parts of the human body and he can do that, yet I bet they would not do so well rattling off pointless facts that have little to do with thier existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen they get 3.6% decline except memory, wouldnt that imply if you gave them a list of animal names with S, they could memorize them?
7000 people out of 7 billion and this is supposed to represent what?
Then what does it imply? I can assure you I would hire a 50 year old man before a 25 year old because when they start to do the job, The 50 year old will be able to do it, without help, do it right and have the ability to invent new stuff when needed. Even if I have to teach the person the job, it is show him or her one time and it is done and likely by the end of the week improved.
The 25 year old fresh out of college will not be able to do the job. I have to unlearn all the useless crap he learned in college, then I will have to teach him everything, numerous times before he gets it and it might be 5 years before he is able to actually invent something new or improve on something already there.
So if a 50 year old can learn new complex jobs immediatly and with little effort, minimal mistakes and improve it and compare that to a 25 year old who cant learn it anywhere near as fast, I would say the 50 year old has significantly superior cognitive skills.
All this test proves is when you are 49 years old, idiotic tests like this one are not worth spending energy in your brain doing. Which means the 49 year old is smarter than the researcher apparently.
Congnitive skill decreases for lack of use, just like anything else, the more you use it the better it is. Perhaps the boredom of retirement causes 65 year olds to decline in cognitive skill because they dont use it anymore, barring a specific medical condition that could have a similar effect.
Perhaps Robert Schmidt you mean to choose another word. liberals are socialists and fascism and socialism are basically the two sides of the same coin of authoritarian rule the Europeans and the wannabe euro-american politicans have been swinging between.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeoCon Religious fanatic? perhaps you mean those people?
Oh Ultimobo, you mean when liberal democrat politicans always simply call anyone who disagrees with them a racist? You know, when their arguments for continuing down the path of socialism no longer work, they just claim you are a racist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWillful ignorance? Conservatards carefully study a set of mythologies, like trickle down economics and the power of tax cuts to solve all economic problems. No evidence exists supporting these beliefs. But the B actor Ronald Reagan believed in them, and Republican'ts have this emotional, kind of gay, thing going with Reagan. So that's all they need to know. Sheesh!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe young people are good at learning new stuff, and the elders are full of experience. That's it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy experience with older and younger employees in a complex technical industry is the older employees can learn new and are full of experience, while the younger ones cant learn new nor have any experience. I would suggest the study be changed to find out how to measure cognitive skill and it is likely they will find the older you get the more advanced cognitive skills become. Based on this ridiculous study a new born infant would then have the highest cognitive skills but in reality, they are simply learning a vast quantity of relatively simple stuff. In college a student learns a vast quantity of pointless stuff it is when years of experience using your brain does true cognitive skill come out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou make a good point; that since this study found that 10 year cognitive skills for those between 45-49 years old had diminished it's still not been determined at what age cognitive diminishment begins.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat this study specifically found was that the cognitive skills of British civil servants diminished for the years 1997-~2007, when this study was conducted, and that they most greatly diminished for those aged 65-70 in 1997, which is not very surprising. I did not find any details about how many 65-70 year old British civil service workers were included in the study(!), but I'd expect that a large percentage of them died before the completion of the study in ~2007.
Perhaps the decline of the British economy was the determining factor affecting this cognitive change in British civil servants during the ten years studied. It might even have been due to an increase in non-English speaking immigrant civil service coworkers. These potential factors and many others were not studied...