Older and wiser? Some brain functions improve as we age

The Boston Globe:

There is hope for aging baby boomers.

The ability to recall names and faces with lightning speed may start to fade in one’s 20s, but our capability to perform other functions, such as learning new words, doesn’t peak until decades later, according to a new study by Boston scientists.

Increasingly, researchers are discovering that the ability to reason, learn, and recall information ebbs and flows over our lifespan, and if a picture were drawn to depict these changes, the image would not be of a single line with a sharp, steep decline, but of a line with many curves that plateau at different stages.

The study by scientists at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital, being published Friday by the journal Psychological Science, is believed to be one of the largest of its kind to illuminate this phenomenon.

“Some things are better, and some things are worse as we age,” said Laura Germine, a psychiatric researcher at Mass. General Hospital and a coauthor of the study. “It’s a complex, dynamic system. It’s nice as you get older to know that maybe I am not as quick as the college students, but I am a little wiser.”

Read the whole story: The Boston Globe