It is generally accepted that youth is the time when we are at the peak of our physical and mental abilities, because with age, the senses, muscles, and brain do not work so well. But as scientists have found out, this is not entirely true: some brain functions work better in old age.
Scientists at the US Georgetown University Medical Center conducted a study of the cognitive abilities of 702 people aged 58 to 98 years and made an unexpected discovery: aging does not worsen, but, on the contrary, improves the cognitive functions of the brain.
The researchers focused on three brain networks:
- warning – responsible for the state of increased vigilance and readiness to respond to incoming information;
- orienting – helps to determine the position in space;
- performing – does not allow us to be distracted by extraneous or incorrect information.
What does their work look like in real life? Imagine you are driving a car.
“Your alertness as you approach an intersection is the work of a warning network,” explains João Verissimo, one of the study’s authors. – Orientation is triggered when we switch our attention to an unexpected movement, for example, to a pedestrian. And the performing one is when we focus on the road and ignore the birds or the billboards.”
It turned out that with age, only one of the networks begins to work worse – the warning one. But the abilities of orienting and performing are improving.
Most likely, the fact is that they are much easier to practice in everyday life. What we do every time we focus on one thing or another: when we try to work, ignoring other people’s conversations, looking out for a friend in the crowd, or putting together puzzles.
According to scientists, the results of the study can be trusted – its authors took into account all possible errors, excluded alternative explanations for the phenomenon, and a large number of participants suggests that there can be no chance.
And if so, then we have taken a small but important step towards another clue in the field of the human body. “These data are changing our understanding of how aging affects consciousness. In addition, they can lead to clinical improvements, including for patients in whom the aging process is impaired, such as in the case of Alzheimer’s disease, ”explained lead author Michael Ullman.