Which common mental power peaks in your 60’s or 70’s?
Tuesday, January, 2, 2024.
Humans reach the peak of their mental powers at different ages for different skills, according to a 2015 study.
People think fastest at around 18-years-old, but, for example the neurotypical prized ability to read the emotions of others does not peak until between 40 and 60, the study found.
This is what I thought was interesting; there may be no time in human life at which all the mental powers are peaking, although some power constellations do manifest in maturing youth, and young adults.
Dr. Joshua Hartshorne, from Boston College is the study’s co-author, he said:
“At any given age, you’re getting better at some things, you’re getting worse at some other things, and you’re at a plateau at some other things.
There’s probably not one age at which you’re peak on most things, much less all of them.”
How the study was conducted
These research findings are based on data from almost 50,000 humans across a spectrum of various ages who took all sorts of cognitive tests.
For example, visual working memory was measured by asking the study subjects to peruse a series of shapes and try to remember if they had seen them before.
Another test asked the study subjects to evaluate emotions just by looking into pairs of eyes.
The results showed that the brain’s raw processing speed peaks at age 18 or 19, and then plummets to a lower new normal.
Short-term memory, however, peaks around 25 and levels off power-wise until around the age of 35.
The study found that the human visual working memory tends to peak at around 25.
Working memory for numbers, though, peaks at around 35.
The findings — especially on the late blooming in language — go against some established theories.
It has mostly been thought that the brain’s performance peaks around 20, then declines almost across the board.
This study, though, shows a much more complex picture of how mental powers change with age.
Dr. Laura Germine, is currently the technical director of the McLean Institute for Technology in Psychiatry, the director of the Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Health Technology, part of the Advanced Bioinformatics and Computational Discovery Hub, at McLean Hospital, and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In 2015, Dr. Germine was another of this study’s co-authors:
“If you go into the data on gene expression or brain structure at different ages, you see these lifespan patterns that we don’t know what to make of.
The brain seems to continue to change in dynamic ways through early adulthood and middle age.
The question is: What does it mean?
How does it map onto the way you function in the world, or the way you think, or the way you change as you age?
[This study] paints a different picture of the way we change over the lifespan than psychology and neuroscience have traditionally painted.”
Final Thoughts
I love this study. It’s fascinating to appreciate how the human brain might enjoy a variety of peak performance experiences.
But it makes me wonder how our growing understanding of the natural variations in human brains impacts the timeline of peak cognitive powers? Do the neurodiverse experience a variation that may differ from these findings?
Or is their presence among the 50,000 study subjects detectable? This is such an intriguing piece of work by researchers who went on to prominence in neuroscience.
Oh, did you think I forgot about the mental power that peaks in your 60’s and 70’s?
That would be vocabulary.
Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Hartshorne, J. K., & Germine, L. T. (2015). When Does Cognitive Functioning Peak? The Asynchronous Rise and Fall of Different Cognitive Abilities Across the Life Span. Psychological Science, 26(4), 433-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614567339
