21 ms·

Mental speed is high until age sixty

466 points by qw 4y ago

saiya-jin 4y ago
Case point only 2, but I can see slow but steady decline in my parents after their 50s. No addiction like alcohol or tobacco, no neuro-degenerative diseases, they just became slower, grumpier, more and more detached from 'the edge of society'. Now they are in their 60s and same work they did all their life (leading economical department of 3 high schools with various rental properties, manager at metal engineering company having at one time 300 subordinates), they would barely manage. Memory starts to go down too. At this rate, it will last them well into 90s to be OK for anything ordinary life can bring, but to ignore this is to ignore reality right in front of me. Maybe there is some other factor, like constant hard training of the brain by having ever-evolving creative work instead of kind of same office work, or some other aspect.
- rjh29 4y ago
  My mum is a teaching assistant and is 71. She seems as sharp as ever and mood is the same. I think it's key that she still works full-time in a very social environment and keeps active outside of work. It's pretty clear to me that mental health declines rapidly once you start isolating and staying indoors all the time.
  - reactor 4y ago
    Yes pretty much, loneliness is a silent killer. Its so 'silent' that you won't even notice that you are declining but interestingly others will notice.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      Although it has been difficult to ascertain exactly the relative weights of stress, anxiety, frustration, and so on due to the past two years, I think a large part of my current cognitive difficulties are stemming from social isolation. Do not recommend. It turns out that even extremely introverted people do very badly when isolated which I suppose is kind of an involuntary (for whatever reason) situation. I am young, so I hopefully have not caused any permanent issues with my time of isolation - I shudder to think what it would do to me if I were 60 and facing the physical decline of old age.
      - olivermarks 4y ago
        Physical decline is hugely variable and arguably primarily a function of genetics. I would also argue some people's 'mental speed' was never that great - humans are hugely variable in performance, strength and weaknesses which makes me doubt the 'until after 60' concept. I have a 92 year old mother who is very good mentally for example compared to many people half her age...
        bigDinosaur 4y ago
        It'd be a hugely unethical experiment to do, but I suspect we'll have quite a bit of data coming out of areas that did full lockdowns for extended periods of time (that were enforced) over the past two years. We should, if the theory that isolation causes cognitive decline is true, see a general decline in certain populations and it should diverge from matches around the world etc.
        traceroute66 4y ago
        > It'd be a hugely unethical experiment to do Hugely unethical, but also not scientifically sound. COVID infection itself has already been demonstrated in various papers to cause mental decline (TL;DR there seems to be a correlation between how "sick" you got and the amount of decline). There is also the unknown of long-term post-COVID-infection consequences on the brain. So you would have a bit of a hard time trying to seek to attribute lockdowns to mental decline. Especially, as we know, COVID can manifest itself as an asymptomatic disease. You then have the additional question of what are you going to count the infectious isolation period as ? It would not be ethical to count it as "lockdown". Basically it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve any sort of statistical segregation between "lockdown" and "COVID". Thus your input data would be messy, and per the GarbageIn-GarbageOut rule, so would your "conclusion".
        bigDinosaur 4y ago
        I don't agree that it's not 'scientifically sound', it just depends on what signals the data actually shows. Natural experiments are never perfect and with something like isolation it's probably impossible to ever see such natural experiments without major confounders. I don't see why that makes you abandon the idea that anything can be learned at all.
  - traceroute66 4y ago
    > My mum is a teaching assistant and is 71. She seems as sharp as ever and mood is the same. I think it's key that she still works I agree. I don't necessarily buy the "loneliness" argument for cognitive decline. However I certainly buy the importance of keeping mentally and physically active. Infact I would go as far as saying people who use the "loneliness" term are actually just using it as a lazy synonym for "lack of mental and physical activity". You don't necessarily need to surround yourself with people to achieve it. Whether its still working in a job, or doing non-job activities such as gardening, travelling, photography, I think keeping your brain busy and your body moving is the key. If you revert to the cliché retirement image of taking long naps during the day, stopping only to eat and watch daytime TV, then IMHO that's where the problems start.
    - reactor 4y ago
      I tend to disagree. Mental and Physical activities require intent and effort. At older stage, your willpower alone will not push you to make you get up and do it. But if you are socially surrounded, you will have something to get moving. Also, working out or doing other physical/mental activities themselves alone gets so boring after sometime, coz there's isn't much to looking forward to.
- metafunctor 4y ago
  Counterpoint of one, my dad's in in his 70s, and seems sharp as ever. Last summer, he took upon a project of building a protocol converter between a GPS device and some kind of sailing computer in his sailboat. I politely listened to many details, which I immediately forgot, but there was a Rasperry Pi and some protocols on serial buses and making sense of binary logs. His system works and is in use. Either he was really, really fucking smart 25 years ago, or there was no steep decline so far. I'm betting it's the latter.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- wtetzner 4y ago
  > Maybe there is some other factor, like constant hard training of the brain by having ever-evolving creative work instead of kind of same office work, or some other aspect. I have a suspicion that a lot of it comes down to diet. After a while it catches up to you. And I don't think what mainstreams doctors consider to be a healthy diet is necessarily what we should be eating.
- postalrat 4y ago
  > Now they are in their 60s and same work they did all their life, they would barely manage. Memory starts to go down too. Are they still working or not?
torginus 4y ago
Now what does that say about the geriatrics that seem to be running all major world powers right now?
- paskozdilar 4y ago
  I'm pretty convinced that they all get their daily dose of amphetamines or some kind of smart drugs from their physicians. I mean, Erdos did it and he was productive until his 70's.
- belter 4y ago
  This is only measuring mental speed, not: - Common sense - Life experience - Intelligence - Ability to listen to others - Curiosity - Empathy
  - donthellbanme 4y ago
    And the most important asset; money.
    - blaeks 4y ago
      289. A man is only worth the sum of his possessions. you know your rules, Ferengi <3
      - belter 4y ago
        Ah Ferengi's. Lots of them in the Belt. 211 - Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    And many of those degrade with age too, IQ peaks in your 20's, and I question life experience formed in the cold war, back when homosexuality was a crime and racism was common sence, houses were 2x annual income and top tax bracket was 70% If we have minimum age for participating in politics, there should be a maximum age. Set it at like 70% of life expectancy. Alternatovely, remove minimum age - I would rather have a 16 year old in parliament than a 90 year old, maybe some problems with schools will actually get addressed.
marie1595 4y ago
johnywalks 4y ago
How high?
ourmandave 4y ago
Abstract Response speeds in simple decision-making tasks begin to decline from early and middle adulthood. However, response times are not pure measures of mental speed but instead represent the sum of multiple processes. Here we apply a Bayesian diffusion model to extract interpretable cognitive components from raw response time data. We apply our model to cross-sectional data from 1.2 million participants to examine age differences in cognitive parameters. To efficiently parse this large dataset, we apply a Bayesian inference method for efficient parameter estimation using specialized neural networks. Our results indicate that response time slowing begins as early as age 20, but this slowing was attributable to increases in decision caution and to slower non-decisional processes, rather than to differences in mental speed. Slowing of mental speed was observed only after approximately age 60. Our research thus challenges widespread beliefs about the relationship between age and mental speed.
- paraschopra 4y ago
  What non-decisional processes are they talking about? Sorry, don't have access to the fulltext.
  - Icko 4y ago
    perhaps reading speed?
  - derbOac 4y ago
    Usually in these types of models it's unspecified, like error in a regression. There's the threshold of evidence required for a decision, decision time, and other time, for example. Examples of things might include motor speed, like the speed required to press the button, etc.
crismigo 4y ago
mustardgreen 4y ago
Thomas Hobbes was in his 60’s when he wrote Leviathan. I think about that a lot when I get discouraged.
- usgroup 4y ago
  I think Immanuel Kant was around 60 when he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason. There are lots of examples of old people doing good stuff.
admissionsguy 4y ago
Over the years, I have become convinced that much of the observed age-correlated cognitive decline in people younger than ~70 results from voluntary life choices, such as settling into fixed behavioural patterns (e.g. doing the same thing over and over for decades) and lack of exposure to new stimuli. It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance.
- foldr 4y ago
  >It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance. It's pretty telling that these days people remain competitive up to their mid 30s even in pure athletics. For anyone under 60 who's not an elite athlete, age-related decline is probably noise compared to the difference that an hour or two of extra training per week would make. (That's not to deny that injuries etc. become more of a problem as you get older.)
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    I think there's been a lot of advancement in nutrition, recovery and medicine to get to this stage. Unfortunately mental performance boosting seems taboo (eg. Modafinil) almost like steroids.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      I’ve not seen anyone taboo mental stimulant drugs, the closest I’ve seen to that is (1) people don’t like things associated with treating mental illnesses and (2) that it’s hard to tell the difference between real medicine and quackery. Outside those two categories, caffeine is one of the most used mental stimulants in the world, and sold in forms emphasising this use.
      - moonchrome 4y ago
        You can't buy or request modafinil for performance enhancement, even with doctor supervision, despite known side effects being very benign.
justinlloyd 4y ago
I will stop work the day I die. I don't think I will ever retire. It is just simply not for me. Be curious. Seek out interesting problems. Never stop learning. I don't think I am any slower today than I was at the start of my career.
- erwincoumans 4y ago
  Agreed, keep exercising your mind and body and stay curious.
- qiskit 4y ago
  > I will stop work the day I die. This has to be the saddest thing I've ever read. Modern culture/capitalism/whatever has replaced an individual's family, friends, purpose, identity, etc with their job. Truly, "arbeit macht frei". > Be curious. "I will stop work the day I die. I don't think I will ever retire. It is just simply not for me." Sounds like the most "non curious" life possible. But people should lead the life they want. > I don't think I am any slower today than I was at the start of my career. You are. Not only are you mentally slower, you are physically slower. But it's okay since your decline in one aspect is offset by accrued wisdom and experience. At least hopefully. To deny you are slower today is as silly as denying you are wiser and more experienced. It's part of life and aging.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    >This has to be the saddest thing I've ever read Here on HN a lot of people are lucky enough to be able to work on their own terms and on things they enjoy so you probably should not rush to that conclusion. I grew up, very rural, plenty of family, not a lot of work. To me it was suffocating. Couldn't use my brain for anything. Work has given me the opportunity to travel, see other places, build some useful things (hopefully) that other people value and so on.
  - justinlloyd 4y ago
    I'd reply to you, but I cannot decide whether you're willfully misinterpreting everything I said or have the mental acuity of a garden snail with a reading comprehension problem. You keep doing you. I have an incredibly happy life doing precisely what I want to be doing.
pmoriarty 4y ago
There are some studies that suggest that psychedelics may increase neuroplasticity and promote neurogenesis. Studies about in to whether psychedelics may help diseases like Alzheimer's are underway.
dksfjhkdsafhka 4y ago
belter 4y ago
A paper funded by the German tax payer (https://www.dfg.de/ https://www.dfg.de/) that they need to pay to access :-) Code here: https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters
Misteur-Z 4y ago
Having done in the same day 6 hours of psycho-technical and psycho-motor tests at Air France to get into their "Pilote Cadet" program (4h in the morning then 2h in the afternoon after a lunch break), I definitely felt my mental speed during high load+stress at 32 was already a lot slower than at 20 in engineering school. I never felt so brain exhausted and I concluded I was not that sharp anymore ...
- EMM_386 4y ago
  > Having done in the same day 6 hours of psycho-technical and psycho-motor tests at Air France to get into their "Pilote Cadet" program I definitely felt my mental speed during high load+stress at 32 was already a lot slower than at 20 in engineering school. I never felt so brain exhausted and I concluded I was not that sharp anymore ... This is why none of the answers here make any sense. Many seem to want to blame this on desk jobs and sitting. Others on not learning new things. Then you have examples of super-high cognitive workload and stress saying this is the problem. These things don't fit together. I hold a US CPL and work as a programmer at a desk job. Where exactly does that leave me?
mellosouls 4y ago
Personally I don't think it's anything to worry about for the vast majority of people, only those rare outliers of both brilliance and industry are going to see significant negative effects in their output due to age-related mental decline. In terms of individual peak production the greatest pop stars, physicists and poets (say) are done by 25. Your average decent coder can pretty much go on producing for decades. Only at the extremes is this going to have a massive effect. Most of us don't live there and we maybe over-worry about it.
- master_crab 4y ago
  The link between young age and (new) musical production is well established. Everything else - with the possible exception of math which is pretty related to musical ability - less so.
- AQuantized 4y ago
  Although there are plenty of examples of great physicists with very early output, most typically continue to contribute substantially. Even Einstein's major breakthroughs in general relativity didn't come until his late 30s. Modern theoretical physicists like Ed Witten often didn't get started until ~25 and most of their contributions come much later.
johnaspden 4y ago
Say researchers in their mid-fifties, the prime of life.
grammers 4y ago
From my experience, you only become 'slower' due to avoiding challenges. When you are young, you are forced to mastering challenges: at school, college, in life (moving out, organizing your life independently), etc. Once you are settled in this routine, there are no forced challenges anymore. You need to keep looking for them. ;)
- euroderf 4y ago
  Ya gotta stretch yer brain !
- alach11 4y ago
  > you only become 'slower' due to avoiding challenges This is exactly what the study disproves. It breaks out "slowness" into the multiple components. Caution is one of these.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    That's not necessarily right, in my reading. Taking a bit longer to think before speaking / acting is not the same as avoiding challenging / novel situations.
- ParksNet 4y ago
  Our modern 'retirement' system is one of the greatest failures of our Civilization. We confiscate a significant portion of the income of the young and productive, and direct it so that a certain generation can sit rich and idle for decades. We would be better to abandon pensions, and direct the savings to eliminating sales and payroll taxes, to reduce Cost of Living and encourage work. The expectation should be that you keep working until you are physically incapable of doing so (where a medical disability payment is available), whilst being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor from lower taxes. There's significant evidence that work maintains the body and mind in old age anyway.
  - danamit 4y ago
    Work is not abandonant today, there is a shortage.
fortran77 4y ago
Phew! I'm 59 1/2.
lr4444lr 4y ago
This is just an abstract, so maybe I am missing something, but it sounds like a subtle moral judgment is being inserted here that faster is better: younger people react faster often because of impulsivity. Why should we believe that a faster response time is a good thing, aside from swerving to avoid an accident and the like? Is that what was under measure here?
- zopa 4y ago
  Why is a correct response better than an incorrect one? Everything's subjective, but I'm pretty comfortable with faster is better, all else being equal.
herdcall 4y ago
I think there's some of the well-known "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) thing going on as well. As we age, we gain knowledge and insights that we try to reconcile with as we learn new things, and that takes longer. E.g., if you're learning the theory of music scales, those with a math background will tend to think of the math behind the notes as they learn, which is the "Think Slow" way (with active analysis) and takes longer but results in a deeper understanding.
TaupeRanger 4y ago
Lots of things can happen to your brain as you age. But if it's physically healthy, there's not much difference between people of different ages. Noam Chomsky is 93 and, though he speaks more slowly, his mind is sharp as ever. It's just that, statistically speaking, older people have a higher chance of physical problems inside the brain or brain cells, probably many we don't even know about yet.
- mihaitodor 4y ago
  And speaking more slowly could be the result of years of experience that taught him to think carefully about what he says, especially in non-casual settings.
- vjerancrnjak 4y ago
  Same can be said of Donald Knuth. He even made a shorter proof than the proof that was considered to be a proof from the book years ago, moments after the original proof was published. I mean, they all might be outliers for as long as they live and the general conclusion (of decline) applies to us regular folks.
  - earleybird 4y ago
    Don Knuths' "Christmas Tree" lectures[0] are awesome - every year, something new from 1997 to 2019 (sans 2005 it appears) [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOAvKVR_dyCigSBMcYjevYB https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOAvKVR_dyC...
- aborsy 4y ago
  Chomsky is amazing. Sharp and well spoken, still! Remembers all dates of US wars at 90+!
qiskit 4y ago
There was an article about the decline of brain size/etc yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 How did I know we'd get this article today? Am I clairvoyant? So many people in denial about aging.
nomoreusernames 4y ago
my great grandmother was kicking ass in cardgames and remembered a lot about the things she used in her life. was harder to get new info to stick. took a few more repetitions, but you could see her mind was processing a lot more than mine was. she was a magnificant woman. she turned 101
ck2 4y ago
Can anyone who can see the full paper tell me if there is a male/female difference? Did they bother to break it down male/female?
- persedes 4y ago
  don't have access to the full papaer, but here are some analysis it seems on some group differences (including male/female) https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters/blob/main/IAT_GroupPlots_PPCPlots.ipynb https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters/blob/main/I...
deleted 4y ago
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marstall 4y ago
I'm 53 and recently embarked on a complex self-guided mini-medical education to try to understand my son's rare condition. I've pushed my way through a 400 page nursing textbook, dozens of scientific papers and a 900 page freshman neuroscience textbook (currently at page 90). I never took any bioscience class after high school software chem. There have been ups and downs. Mentally comparing myself to when I was in school and reading comparable material, I feel my ability to master it was at or above that - at its best. However the amount of time I spend "at my best" in general is MUCH lower than when I was that age. Today I have trouble sleeping many nights. An old hip injury and also anxiety. A night I don't sleep well is definitely not going to be followed by a day where I gain understanding of neuronal membrane chemistry. Didn't have those issues when I was 17 - any time was study time. So I guess this goes along with the thesis of the story. Mental powers are there, but other body systems aren't able to support the brain's demands at quite the same level.
- thewarrior 4y ago
  I guess this would suggest that keeping physically fit and calm is the key to getting the best out of your aging brain.
  - marstall 4y ago
    working on that! :)
  - mtoddsmith 4y ago
    I think a big factor is recovery time. When you’re young you can do some extreme activity and still be well rested the next day. Recovery time even for fit people just gets a bit slower when older. But if you’re not pushing yourself then you can usually recover fully by the next day.
    - gdfgdgdfgfdzg 4y ago
li2uR3ce 4y ago
All of us leaded gas brain damaged dimwits are about to hit a double whammy?
gdfgdgdfgfdzg 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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SubiculumCode 4y ago
I suspect that the largest declines in mental health, and in heart health, associated with aging is associated with obesity, but not directly because of obesity, but because of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is very prevalent among the over-weight, and it prevents quality sleep, creating stressors of all kinds. Now that apnea is being more aggressively treated in the last decade, I actually suspect that associations between cognitive health and aging to be pushed back even further.
dang 4y ago
Recent and (loosely) related: The brain expands and shrinks over time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 - April 2022 (46 comments) Brain charts: mapping the rapid growth and slow decline of the brain over life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943370 - April 2022 (27 comments)
racl101 4y ago
It's weird. We only have like a 20-30 year window where we've attained the most knowledge and experience we'll ever attain and be the best mental version of ourselves and then we go down the shitter.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
speby 4y ago
Oh, great, one more thing to soil the age discrimination problem we have throughout society. Even if this is all true or whatnot, it's still a pretty terrible thing for people the older they get.
- qgin 4y ago
  How should we think about the concept of discrimination in cases like this where it’s based in reality? I’m not sure.
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    If every person's ability was assessed the same way, but the 80 year old applicant didn't meet the standards and wasn't hired, is that ageism/discrimination, or is it the right way of doing things? If a job has a requirement and someone doesn't meet it then they simply won't be able to do the job.
beanjuice 4y ago
Comment re-pasted from pubpeer [1], as this article contains claims which amy be disingenuous due to data handling. "This article was reviewed on the error bar podcast episode 25: https://theerrorbar.com/?e=25 https://theerrorbar.com/?e=25 & story 106: https://theerrorbar.com/?s=106 https://theerrorbar.com/?s=106. The review was done in the light of newspaper headlines about the article. The slightly-edited transcript is copied here: headline: BRAIN DOESN'T SLOW DOWN UNTIL 60 tweet: analysis of 1.2 million responses on the 'implicit association test' finds that adults' mental processing speed is totally good & constant until age 60. that's good news for all adults over age 35. until you look at the data. description: in a story likely comforting to middle aged scientists & journalists, the Guardian & Independent reported last week that, Good News: the brain does not slow down until we are aged 60. what did they mean? the result comes from a quite complicated analysis of an enormously huge set of data. a social psychology project in the USA has collected nearly 2 million responses from people who were asked to categorise things on a computer screen as, for example, 'good' versus 'bad' or as 'black' versus 'white'. they did this 120 times each. in general, the results of this so-called 'implicit association test' are able to reveal people's unconscious attitudes - in this example, that white things are good & black things are bad. this test is a classic & it relies on people responding as quickly as possible. in the new study, researchers in Germany downloaded 1.8 million test responses from the free online database. they analysed how people's responses changed as they age, from 10 to 80 years old. using some sophisticated (& unnecessarily complicated) analyses, the researchers reported that, while the total time spent doing the task changes a lot over life, one conclusion is that, in fact, our 'mental processing speed' remains good & strong until age 60. phew! evaluation: does mental speed stay high until age 60? no. this is not a hard one. with a total of nearly 1.2 million responses, all openly available online & clearly-presented in this paper, it is a fantastically-simple task to fact-check this claim. all we need to do is look at the data. i've annotated the image to accompany this story on the error bar website. what the image shows is a gradual & continuous increase in mental speed between age 10 to a peak at about 35, then a gradual & continuous decrease to age 80. it's true that the speed of change seems to be different at different ages, but the strong claim that mental speed is 'high & constant until age 60' is contradicted by just looking at the data. how did it come to this? the error bar dug deeper. first, this is a massive dataset - which is great - but quite a lot of data were removed, for example anyone performing the task without making errors was excluded. that's a bit odd, if the best responders are removed. second, the task itself is quite subjective - is something good or bad? or is something black of white? - & although a well-studied task, it's just one task, so conclusions about mental speed in general must be extremely limited. third, the data are not a good measure of mental processing speed. to test mental speed, we need volunteers to be fully-focussed & making responses as quickly as possible. but the authors included 'response times' as long as nearly 6 seconds, the average times were around 1 second & there were some massive - and unexplained - differences between men's & women's responses. fourth, one claim in the report is that the 'merely mechanical' processes of seeing the stimuli on screen & making the keyboard press response take as long as half a second in the oldest adults. this is a pure fiction - the study provides no sensible measurement of these sensory & motor processing speeds. fifth, & amusingly, the authors chose a particular kind of deep, machine-learning analysis because they said it was "not possible" to analyse all the data in a different, simpler, but more computationally-expensive way. but the new analysis only took 32 hours to run on a computer, which makes me wonder how long the full analysis would take & why was there such a rush to get it done? sixth & critically, the conclusion that mental processing speed is high and constant until age 60 relies only on the authors' choice of how to put a best-fit line on the data. the analysis used requires all the people to be divided into two or more different age groups. for error bar nerds: the data were fit with three straight lines for three age groups. but age is a continuous variable, so why did the authors not just fit a single, continuous curve? well, listeners, i downloaded the data, sharpened Occam's razor & fit that single curve. it provides a very slightly worse explanation of the data, but that's what you would expected, as it is also a much less-complex explanation." [1]
belter 4y ago
Link to the paper: https://rdcu.be/cHd4j https://rdcu.be/cHd4j

466 points by qw 4y ago

Case point only 2, but I can see slow but steady decline in my parents after their 50s. No addiction like alcohol or tobacco, no neuro-degenerative diseases, they just became slower, grumpier, more and more detached from 'the edge of society'. Now they are in their 60s and same work they did all their life (leading economical department of 3 high schools with various rental properties, manager at metal engineering company having at one time 300 subordinates), they would barely manage. Memory starts to go down too. At this rate, it will last them well into 90s to be OK for anything ordinary life can bring, but to ignore this is to ignore reality right in front of me. Maybe there is some other factor, like constant hard training of the brain by having ever-evolving creative work instead of kind of same office work, or some other aspect.

rjh29 4y ago
My mum is a teaching assistant and is 71. She seems as sharp as ever and mood is the same. I think it's key that she still works full-time in a very social environment and keeps active outside of work. It's pretty clear to me that mental health declines rapidly once you start isolating and staying indoors all the time.
- reactor 4y ago
  Yes pretty much, loneliness is a silent killer. Its so 'silent' that you won't even notice that you are declining but interestingly others will notice.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Although it has been difficult to ascertain exactly the relative weights of stress, anxiety, frustration, and so on due to the past two years, I think a large part of my current cognitive difficulties are stemming from social isolation. Do not recommend. It turns out that even extremely introverted people do very badly when isolated which I suppose is kind of an involuntary (for whatever reason) situation. I am young, so I hopefully have not caused any permanent issues with my time of isolation - I shudder to think what it would do to me if I were 60 and facing the physical decline of old age.
    - olivermarks 4y ago
      Physical decline is hugely variable and arguably primarily a function of genetics. I would also argue some people's 'mental speed' was never that great - humans are hugely variable in performance, strength and weaknesses which makes me doubt the 'until after 60' concept. I have a 92 year old mother who is very good mentally for example compared to many people half her age...
      - bigDinosaur 4y ago
        It'd be a hugely unethical experiment to do, but I suspect we'll have quite a bit of data coming out of areas that did full lockdowns for extended periods of time (that were enforced) over the past two years. We should, if the theory that isolation causes cognitive decline is true, see a general decline in certain populations and it should diverge from matches around the world etc.
        traceroute66 4y ago
        > It'd be a hugely unethical experiment to do Hugely unethical, but also not scientifically sound. COVID infection itself has already been demonstrated in various papers to cause mental decline (TL;DR there seems to be a correlation between how "sick" you got and the amount of decline). There is also the unknown of long-term post-COVID-infection consequences on the brain. So you would have a bit of a hard time trying to seek to attribute lockdowns to mental decline. Especially, as we know, COVID can manifest itself as an asymptomatic disease. You then have the additional question of what are you going to count the infectious isolation period as ? It would not be ethical to count it as "lockdown". Basically it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve any sort of statistical segregation between "lockdown" and "COVID". Thus your input data would be messy, and per the GarbageIn-GarbageOut rule, so would your "conclusion".
        bigDinosaur 4y ago
        I don't agree that it's not 'scientifically sound', it just depends on what signals the data actually shows. Natural experiments are never perfect and with something like isolation it's probably impossible to ever see such natural experiments without major confounders. I don't see why that makes you abandon the idea that anything can be learned at all.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > My mum is a teaching assistant and is 71. She seems as sharp as ever and mood is the same. I think it's key that she still works I agree. I don't necessarily buy the "loneliness" argument for cognitive decline. However I certainly buy the importance of keeping mentally and physically active. Infact I would go as far as saying people who use the "loneliness" term are actually just using it as a lazy synonym for "lack of mental and physical activity". You don't necessarily need to surround yourself with people to achieve it. Whether its still working in a job, or doing non-job activities such as gardening, travelling, photography, I think keeping your brain busy and your body moving is the key. If you revert to the cliché retirement image of taking long naps during the day, stopping only to eat and watch daytime TV, then IMHO that's where the problems start.
  - reactor 4y ago
    I tend to disagree. Mental and Physical activities require intent and effort. At older stage, your willpower alone will not push you to make you get up and do it. But if you are socially surrounded, you will have something to get moving. Also, working out or doing other physical/mental activities themselves alone gets so boring after sometime, coz there's isn't much to looking forward to.
metafunctor 4y ago
Counterpoint of one, my dad's in in his 70s, and seems sharp as ever. Last summer, he took upon a project of building a protocol converter between a GPS device and some kind of sailing computer in his sailboat. I politely listened to many details, which I immediately forgot, but there was a Rasperry Pi and some protocols on serial buses and making sense of binary logs. His system works and is in use. Either he was really, really fucking smart 25 years ago, or there was no steep decline so far. I'm betting it's the latter.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wtetzner 4y ago
> Maybe there is some other factor, like constant hard training of the brain by having ever-evolving creative work instead of kind of same office work, or some other aspect. I have a suspicion that a lot of it comes down to diet. After a while it catches up to you. And I don't think what mainstreams doctors consider to be a healthy diet is necessarily what we should be eating.
postalrat 4y ago
> Now they are in their 60s and same work they did all their life, they would barely manage. Memory starts to go down too. Are they still working or not?

torginus 4y ago

Now what does that say about the geriatrics that seem to be running all major world powers right now?

paskozdilar 4y ago
I'm pretty convinced that they all get their daily dose of amphetamines or some kind of smart drugs from their physicians. I mean, Erdos did it and he was productive until his 70's.
belter 4y ago
This is only measuring mental speed, not: - Common sense - Life experience - Intelligence - Ability to listen to others - Curiosity - Empathy
- donthellbanme 4y ago
  And the most important asset; money.
  - blaeks 4y ago
    289. A man is only worth the sum of his possessions. you know your rules, Ferengi <3
    - belter 4y ago
      Ah Ferengi's. Lots of them in the Belt. 211 - Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  And many of those degrade with age too, IQ peaks in your 20's, and I question life experience formed in the cold war, back when homosexuality was a crime and racism was common sence, houses were 2x annual income and top tax bracket was 70% If we have minimum age for participating in politics, there should be a maximum age. Set it at like 70% of life expectancy. Alternatovely, remove minimum age - I would rather have a 16 year old in parliament than a 90 year old, maybe some problems with schools will actually get addressed.

marie1595 4y ago

johnywalks 4y ago

How high?

ourmandave 4y ago

Abstract Response speeds in simple decision-making tasks begin to decline from early and middle adulthood. However, response times are not pure measures of mental speed but instead represent the sum of multiple processes. Here we apply a Bayesian diffusion model to extract interpretable cognitive components from raw response time data. We apply our model to cross-sectional data from 1.2 million participants to examine age differences in cognitive parameters. To efficiently parse this large dataset, we apply a Bayesian inference method for efficient parameter estimation using specialized neural networks. Our results indicate that response time slowing begins as early as age 20, but this slowing was attributable to increases in decision caution and to slower non-decisional processes, rather than to differences in mental speed. Slowing of mental speed was observed only after approximately age 60. Our research thus challenges widespread beliefs about the relationship between age and mental speed.

paraschopra 4y ago
What non-decisional processes are they talking about? Sorry, don't have access to the fulltext.
- Icko 4y ago
  perhaps reading speed?
- derbOac 4y ago
  Usually in these types of models it's unspecified, like error in a regression. There's the threshold of evidence required for a decision, decision time, and other time, for example. Examples of things might include motor speed, like the speed required to press the button, etc.

crismigo 4y ago

mustardgreen 4y ago

Thomas Hobbes was in his 60’s when he wrote Leviathan. I think about that a lot when I get discouraged.

usgroup 4y ago
I think Immanuel Kant was around 60 when he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason. There are lots of examples of old people doing good stuff.

admissionsguy 4y ago

Over the years, I have become convinced that much of the observed age-correlated cognitive decline in people younger than ~70 results from voluntary life choices, such as settling into fixed behavioural patterns (e.g. doing the same thing over and over for decades) and lack of exposure to new stimuli. It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance.

foldr 4y ago
>It's the case for some physical activities as well: almost all people's actual performance degrades way, way faster, than their potential peak performance. It's pretty telling that these days people remain competitive up to their mid 30s even in pure athletics. For anyone under 60 who's not an elite athlete, age-related decline is probably noise compared to the difference that an hour or two of extra training per week would make. (That's not to deny that injuries etc. become more of a problem as you get older.)
- moonchrome 4y ago
  I think there's been a lot of advancement in nutrition, recovery and medicine to get to this stage. Unfortunately mental performance boosting seems taboo (eg. Modafinil) almost like steroids.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I’ve not seen anyone taboo mental stimulant drugs, the closest I’ve seen to that is (1) people don’t like things associated with treating mental illnesses and (2) that it’s hard to tell the difference between real medicine and quackery. Outside those two categories, caffeine is one of the most used mental stimulants in the world, and sold in forms emphasising this use.
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      You can't buy or request modafinil for performance enhancement, even with doctor supervision, despite known side effects being very benign.

justinlloyd 4y ago

I will stop work the day I die. I don't think I will ever retire. It is just simply not for me. Be curious. Seek out interesting problems. Never stop learning. I don't think I am any slower today than I was at the start of my career.

erwincoumans 4y ago
Agreed, keep exercising your mind and body and stay curious.
qiskit 4y ago
> I will stop work the day I die. This has to be the saddest thing I've ever read. Modern culture/capitalism/whatever has replaced an individual's family, friends, purpose, identity, etc with their job. Truly, "arbeit macht frei". > Be curious. "I will stop work the day I die. I don't think I will ever retire. It is just simply not for me." Sounds like the most "non curious" life possible. But people should lead the life they want. > I don't think I am any slower today than I was at the start of my career. You are. Not only are you mentally slower, you are physically slower. But it's okay since your decline in one aspect is offset by accrued wisdom and experience. At least hopefully. To deny you are slower today is as silly as denying you are wiser and more experienced. It's part of life and aging.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >This has to be the saddest thing I've ever read Here on HN a lot of people are lucky enough to be able to work on their own terms and on things they enjoy so you probably should not rush to that conclusion. I grew up, very rural, plenty of family, not a lot of work. To me it was suffocating. Couldn't use my brain for anything. Work has given me the opportunity to travel, see other places, build some useful things (hopefully) that other people value and so on.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  I'd reply to you, but I cannot decide whether you're willfully misinterpreting everything I said or have the mental acuity of a garden snail with a reading comprehension problem. You keep doing you. I have an incredibly happy life doing precisely what I want to be doing.

pmoriarty 4y ago

There are some studies that suggest that psychedelics may increase neuroplasticity and promote neurogenesis. Studies about in to whether psychedelics may help diseases like Alzheimer's are underway.

dksfjhkdsafhka 4y ago

belter 4y ago

A paper funded by the German tax payer (https://www.dfg.de/ https://www.dfg.de/) that they need to pay to access :-) Code here: https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters

Misteur-Z 4y ago

Having done in the same day 6 hours of psycho-technical and psycho-motor tests at Air France to get into their "Pilote Cadet" program (4h in the morning then 2h in the afternoon after a lunch break), I definitely felt my mental speed during high load+stress at 32 was already a lot slower than at 20 in engineering school. I never felt so brain exhausted and I concluded I was not that sharp anymore ...

EMM_386 4y ago
> Having done in the same day 6 hours of psycho-technical and psycho-motor tests at Air France to get into their "Pilote Cadet" program I definitely felt my mental speed during high load+stress at 32 was already a lot slower than at 20 in engineering school. I never felt so brain exhausted and I concluded I was not that sharp anymore ... This is why none of the answers here make any sense. Many seem to want to blame this on desk jobs and sitting. Others on not learning new things. Then you have examples of super-high cognitive workload and stress saying this is the problem. These things don't fit together. I hold a US CPL and work as a programmer at a desk job. Where exactly does that leave me?

mellosouls 4y ago

Personally I don't think it's anything to worry about for the vast majority of people, only those rare outliers of both brilliance and industry are going to see significant negative effects in their output due to age-related mental decline. In terms of individual peak production the greatest pop stars, physicists and poets (say) are done by 25. Your average decent coder can pretty much go on producing for decades. Only at the extremes is this going to have a massive effect. Most of us don't live there and we maybe over-worry about it.

master_crab 4y ago
The link between young age and (new) musical production is well established. Everything else - with the possible exception of math which is pretty related to musical ability - less so.
AQuantized 4y ago
Although there are plenty of examples of great physicists with very early output, most typically continue to contribute substantially. Even Einstein's major breakthroughs in general relativity didn't come until his late 30s. Modern theoretical physicists like Ed Witten often didn't get started until ~25 and most of their contributions come much later.

johnaspden 4y ago

Say researchers in their mid-fifties, the prime of life.

grammers 4y ago

From my experience, you only become 'slower' due to avoiding challenges. When you are young, you are forced to mastering challenges: at school, college, in life (moving out, organizing your life independently), etc. Once you are settled in this routine, there are no forced challenges anymore. You need to keep looking for them. ;)

euroderf 4y ago
Ya gotta stretch yer brain !
alach11 4y ago
> you only become 'slower' due to avoiding challenges This is exactly what the study disproves. It breaks out "slowness" into the multiple components. Caution is one of these.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  That's not necessarily right, in my reading. Taking a bit longer to think before speaking / acting is not the same as avoiding challenging / novel situations.
ParksNet 4y ago
Our modern 'retirement' system is one of the greatest failures of our Civilization. We confiscate a significant portion of the income of the young and productive, and direct it so that a certain generation can sit rich and idle for decades. We would be better to abandon pensions, and direct the savings to eliminating sales and payroll taxes, to reduce Cost of Living and encourage work. The expectation should be that you keep working until you are physically incapable of doing so (where a medical disability payment is available), whilst being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor from lower taxes. There's significant evidence that work maintains the body and mind in old age anyway.
- danamit 4y ago
  Work is not abandonant today, there is a shortage.

fortran77 4y ago

Phew! I'm 59 1/2.

lr4444lr 4y ago

This is just an abstract, so maybe I am missing something, but it sounds like a subtle moral judgment is being inserted here that faster is better: younger people react faster often because of impulsivity. Why should we believe that a faster response time is a good thing, aside from swerving to avoid an accident and the like? Is that what was under measure here?

zopa 4y ago
Why is a correct response better than an incorrect one? Everything's subjective, but I'm pretty comfortable with faster is better, all else being equal.

herdcall 4y ago

I think there's some of the well-known "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) thing going on as well. As we age, we gain knowledge and insights that we try to reconcile with as we learn new things, and that takes longer. E.g., if you're learning the theory of music scales, those with a math background will tend to think of the math behind the notes as they learn, which is the "Think Slow" way (with active analysis) and takes longer but results in a deeper understanding.

TaupeRanger 4y ago

Lots of things can happen to your brain as you age. But if it's physically healthy, there's not much difference between people of different ages. Noam Chomsky is 93 and, though he speaks more slowly, his mind is sharp as ever. It's just that, statistically speaking, older people have a higher chance of physical problems inside the brain or brain cells, probably many we don't even know about yet.

mihaitodor 4y ago
And speaking more slowly could be the result of years of experience that taught him to think carefully about what he says, especially in non-casual settings.
vjerancrnjak 4y ago
Same can be said of Donald Knuth. He even made a shorter proof than the proof that was considered to be a proof from the book years ago, moments after the original proof was published. I mean, they all might be outliers for as long as they live and the general conclusion (of decline) applies to us regular folks.
- earleybird 4y ago
  Don Knuths' "Christmas Tree" lectures[0] are awesome - every year, something new from 1997 to 2019 (sans 2005 it appears) [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOAvKVR_dyCigSBMcYjevYB https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOAvKVR_dyC...
aborsy 4y ago
Chomsky is amazing. Sharp and well spoken, still! Remembers all dates of US wars at 90+!

qiskit 4y ago

There was an article about the decline of brain size/etc yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 How did I know we'd get this article today? Am I clairvoyant? So many people in denial about aging.

nomoreusernames 4y ago

my great grandmother was kicking ass in cardgames and remembered a lot about the things she used in her life. was harder to get new info to stick. took a few more repetitions, but you could see her mind was processing a lot more than mine was. she was a magnificant woman. she turned 101

ck2 4y ago

Can anyone who can see the full paper tell me if there is a male/female difference? Did they bother to break it down male/female?

persedes 4y ago
don't have access to the full papaer, but here are some analysis it seems on some group differences (including male/female) https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters/blob/main/IAT_GroupPlots_PPCPlots.ipynb https://github.com/stefanradev93/DataSizeMatters/blob/main/I...

deleted 4y ago

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marstall 4y ago

I'm 53 and recently embarked on a complex self-guided mini-medical education to try to understand my son's rare condition. I've pushed my way through a 400 page nursing textbook, dozens of scientific papers and a 900 page freshman neuroscience textbook (currently at page 90). I never took any bioscience class after high school software chem. There have been ups and downs. Mentally comparing myself to when I was in school and reading comparable material, I feel my ability to master it was at or above that - at its best. However the amount of time I spend "at my best" in general is MUCH lower than when I was that age. Today I have trouble sleeping many nights. An old hip injury and also anxiety. A night I don't sleep well is definitely not going to be followed by a day where I gain understanding of neuronal membrane chemistry. Didn't have those issues when I was 17 - any time was study time. So I guess this goes along with the thesis of the story. Mental powers are there, but other body systems aren't able to support the brain's demands at quite the same level.

thewarrior 4y ago
I guess this would suggest that keeping physically fit and calm is the key to getting the best out of your aging brain.
- marstall 4y ago
  working on that! :)
- mtoddsmith 4y ago
  I think a big factor is recovery time. When you’re young you can do some extreme activity and still be well rested the next day. Recovery time even for fit people just gets a bit slower when older. But if you’re not pushing yourself then you can usually recover fully by the next day.
  - gdfgdgdfgfdzg 4y ago

li2uR3ce 4y ago

All of us leaded gas brain damaged dimwits are about to hit a double whammy?

gdfgdgdfgfdzg 4y ago

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SubiculumCode 4y ago

I suspect that the largest declines in mental health, and in heart health, associated with aging is associated with obesity, but not directly because of obesity, but because of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is very prevalent among the over-weight, and it prevents quality sleep, creating stressors of all kinds. Now that apnea is being more aggressively treated in the last decade, I actually suspect that associations between cognitive health and aging to be pushed back even further.

dang 4y ago

Recent and (loosely) related: The brain expands and shrinks over time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048591 - April 2022 (46 comments) Brain charts: mapping the rapid growth and slow decline of the brain over life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943370 - April 2022 (27 comments)

racl101 4y ago

It's weird. We only have like a 20-30 year window where we've attained the most knowledge and experience we'll ever attain and be the best mental version of ourselves and then we go down the shitter.

deleted 4y ago
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speby 4y ago

Oh, great, one more thing to soil the age discrimination problem we have throughout society. Even if this is all true or whatnot, it's still a pretty terrible thing for people the older they get.

qgin 4y ago
How should we think about the concept of discrimination in cases like this where it’s based in reality? I’m not sure.
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  If every person's ability was assessed the same way, but the 80 year old applicant didn't meet the standards and wasn't hired, is that ageism/discrimination, or is it the right way of doing things? If a job has a requirement and someone doesn't meet it then they simply won't be able to do the job.

beanjuice 4y ago

Comment re-pasted from pubpeer [1], as this article contains claims which amy be disingenuous due to data handling. "This article was reviewed on the error bar podcast episode 25: https://theerrorbar.com/?e=25 https://theerrorbar.com/?e=25 & story 106: https://theerrorbar.com/?s=106 https://theerrorbar.com/?s=106. The review was done in the light of newspaper headlines about the article. The slightly-edited transcript is copied here: headline: BRAIN DOESN'T SLOW DOWN UNTIL 60 tweet: analysis of 1.2 million responses on the 'implicit association test' finds that adults' mental processing speed is totally good & constant until age 60. that's good news for all adults over age 35. until you look at the data. description: in a story likely comforting to middle aged scientists & journalists, the Guardian & Independent reported last week that, Good News: the brain does not slow down until we are aged 60. what did they mean? the result comes from a quite complicated analysis of an enormously huge set of data. a social psychology project in the USA has collected nearly 2 million responses from people who were asked to categorise things on a computer screen as, for example, 'good' versus 'bad' or as 'black' versus 'white'. they did this 120 times each. in general, the results of this so-called 'implicit association test' are able to reveal people's unconscious attitudes - in this example, that white things are good & black things are bad. this test is a classic & it relies on people responding as quickly as possible. in the new study, researchers in Germany downloaded 1.8 million test responses from the free online database. they analysed how people's responses changed as they age, from 10 to 80 years old. using some sophisticated (& unnecessarily complicated) analyses, the researchers reported that, while the total time spent doing the task changes a lot over life, one conclusion is that, in fact, our 'mental processing speed' remains good & strong until age 60. phew! evaluation: does mental speed stay high until age 60? no. this is not a hard one. with a total of nearly 1.2 million responses, all openly available online & clearly-presented in this paper, it is a fantastically-simple task to fact-check this claim. all we need to do is look at the data. i've annotated the image to accompany this story on the error bar website. what the image shows is a gradual & continuous increase in mental speed between age 10 to a peak at about 35, then a gradual & continuous decrease to age 80. it's true that the speed of change seems to be different at different ages, but the strong claim that mental speed is 'high & constant until age 60' is contradicted by just looking at the data. how did it come to this? the error bar dug deeper. first, this is a massive dataset - which is great - but quite a lot of data were removed, for example anyone performing the task without making errors was excluded. that's a bit odd, if the best responders are removed. second, the task itself is quite subjective - is something good or bad? or is something black of white? - & although a well-studied task, it's just one task, so conclusions about mental speed in general must be extremely limited. third, the data are not a good measure of mental processing speed. to test mental speed, we need volunteers to be fully-focussed & making responses as quickly as possible. but the authors included 'response times' as long as nearly 6 seconds, the average times were around 1 second & there were some massive - and unexplained - differences between men's & women's responses. fourth, one claim in the report is that the 'merely mechanical' processes of seeing the stimuli on screen & making the keyboard press response take as long as half a second in the oldest adults. this is a pure fiction - the study provides no sensible measurement of these sensory & motor processing speeds. fifth, & amusingly, the authors chose a particular kind of deep, machine-learning analysis because they said it was "not possible" to analyse all the data in a different, simpler, but more computationally-expensive way. but the new analysis only took 32 hours to run on a computer, which makes me wonder how long the full analysis would take & why was there such a rush to get it done? sixth & critically, the conclusion that mental processing speed is high and constant until age 60 relies only on the authors' choice of how to put a best-fit line on the data. the analysis used requires all the people to be divided into two or more different age groups. for error bar nerds: the data were fit with three straight lines for three age groups. but age is a continuous variable, so why did the authors not just fit a single, continuous curve? well, listeners, i downloaded the data, sharpened Occam's razor & fit that single curve. it provides a very slightly worse explanation of the data, but that's what you would expected, as it is also a much less-complex explanation." [1]

belter 4y ago

Link to the paper: https://rdcu.be/cHd4j https://rdcu.be/cHd4j