Older Brains Slow Due to Greater Experience, Rather Than Cognitive Decline
Older adults often require more time to process or recall information. New research published in Topics in Cognitive Science shows that this may be due, not to cognitive decline, but instead to the wealth of information accumulated throughout a lifespan. Researchers at the University of Tuebingen reviewed data examining age-related cognition, and found that many of the standard tests measuring this appeared to be flawed. So they programmed a computer to act like a human, 'reading' a certain amount each day and learning new things. At the beginning, the computer performed exactly like a young adult. When the computer had accumulated a 'lifetime' of experience, its processing speed began to slow down because it had accumulated much more information over time. Thus, they concluded that an elderly individual's difficulty in recalling words may be caused by the simple fact that they know more words and it's harder to differentiate such a large vocabulary. If validated, these findings could reflect a shift in how we think about memory and cognition in older adults.
Source:
http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/01/older-brains-slow-due-greater-experience-rather-cognitive-decline
Journal article: The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2014. DOI: 10.1111/tops.12078
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Don't make me ask you how old are you Russell Hough ;) ... you're kinda young to say that.
ReplyDeleteI'm kinda old..and I have an idle brain, so I'll get back to you when I'll find my words Russell Hough
ReplyDeleteHow is the speed of the brain measured in the study? I think it should highly depend on thinking habits. If you rely on good set of heuristics, you may be quick even as you are old.
ReplyDeleteUmmm... oh are you saying that you were born back in '63? really?
ReplyDeleteOh, I saw who you are now...I should have recognized you before ;)
ReplyDeleteSo older people have "more RAM" right? If only we could upgrad brain processing like upgrading Intel processors on our laptops. :/
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought Phil Tiongson , I like it!
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly the excuse I need for when my brain regularly falters - especially with people's names. Fortunately or unfortunately, in my mid 40s I can't claim a senior's moment. So, for now on I'll be saying that the rapidity of a brain is inversely proportional to the extent of its wisdom. LOL
ReplyDeleteIs the opposite of not shooting a messenger with bad news, giving chocolates to a messenger with good news? Please send me your address Corina - I'd like to send a truck of truffles your way! ;)
The article might be correct regarding why it might seem that brains slow down with age. But because the way current digital computers work compared to how brains work are so different, I don't think you can really use how a computers computation changes with greater amounts of information to say very much about how the human brain might operate.
ReplyDeleteThe human brain carries out many operations in parallel while the modern digital computer is fairly limited in the number of parallel operations. Consciously, we don't do that many things in parallel. But there's a lot going on in the brain that we don't consciously know about. We know the outcome, but not how the outcome was constructed.
One thing I've always found personally interesting in my own experience relates to how I recall the name of someone or something. These are names that I don't routinely have to know day in or day out. And maybe they are names that I don't know well. I'll draw a complete blank. I've learned that when that happens to just quit trying to think about it and go on with my day. Moments later the name often pops out of nowhere. I have no idea how the brain is actually able to accomplish this. I can visualize how a digital computer would accomplish the task. And maybe I can gain some understanding about how the brain might work based on how I know I can make a computer do something. But, I think it's still a really fuzzy understanding.
It's true a computer doesn't have the complex fuzzy memory that a brain has, which is losing and generating new cells and overwriting old memories all the time.
ReplyDeleteA computer would simply have longer processing time because it's creating incrementally longer chains of logic operations with a finite amount of ram.
Besides, we already know that neurodegenerative diseases are due to cognitive decline. That's why say memantine is proven to help for someone with Azheimer's or Parkinsons due to NMDA receptor upregulation; because their neurons are degrading. But is still something here, in this study, that I find interesting ;)
No doubt human brain function differs from current computing architectures Michael Rutherford. However, independent of the specific mechanisms of memory and cognition, you have the logical reality that as information grows searching through it is more 'complex' (com sci talk for computationally expensive).
ReplyDeleteInteresting study, and interesting conclusions.
ReplyDeleteBut without the details of how they implemented for example indexing of this huge amount of data as the computer 'aged' (the algorithms that make big chunks of data accessible in a fast and efficient way) I would be cautious about comparing the workings of a computer and a human brain.
I'm not a neuroscientist , but the computer scientists have been struggling quite a while to create a machine that thinks like a human being. From what I know, they say there's still a few decades left before they'll get there.
Kuba Rychlik you should read this paper to understand more ;)
ReplyDeletehttp://psych.stanford.edu/~michael/papers/Ramscaretal_age.pdf
OK, just give me a second ;)
ReplyDelete+Michael Rutherford The phenomenon of succeeding at remembering something by giving up trying is curious (when it isn't irritating as hell!). Ironically, Corina posted something related to this a month or so ago - as I recall it was about more effective cognitive function when the brain is in a relaxed state.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting memory performance phenomenon is the varying performance of recalling a word given the meaning Vs recalling meaning from word. For me, usually moving from word to meaning is generally quite easy. Whereas, it will takes much longer to recall a word given a meaning. As an example 'ruminate' - I understand the meaning of that word instantaneously. However, I often can't remember the word when want to use it! lol
Sean Walker I think the word to meaning difficulty makes some sense though because when you go from word to meaning, you're going from short and concise to a longer and sometimes varying string of words. Maybe a slightly different set of words each time you do it. Reversing that is a little more difficult. Maybe because there is more than one choice when trying to think of the word or because the string of words in the meaning isn't the same string each time.
ReplyDeleteRegarding aging and thought processes though, there is something I find myself experiencing more with age. I'm doing something, reading something, web browsing, etc. and think of another thing that I need or want to do. Minutes later, I can't remember it but I know there was something I wanted to do. So, to trigger the thought again I try to retrace my steps. It generally works but is really annoying. I'm pretty sure I didn't used to have that problem.
Fantastic! Now I have a new excuse!
ReplyDeleteI agree with what the study is suggesting. I myself have notice the same effects. Even my IQ exam scores are improving. Yet, I notice my speed has declined. I feel as I'm accessing a larger library that is not very well organized.
Our Neanderthal brains have not had much time to evolve in our rapidly growing world of knowledge. Our brains have limits in processing power. Somehow it's learned tricks over thousands of years to process information in its limited capability. For example optical elusions. Our brains find ways to take available data and improvise an interpretation of what's going on in its world. Meaning it can create its own reality of the future as in escaping danger. The mind needs to see shadows and background to perceive a 3D world. There are numerous short cuts the brain does to make up for its lack of processing power.
Yeah - I've always had a little ADD but with age I'm finding it hard to take things back off the stack and remember what I intended to do at each point of interuption.
ReplyDeleteSo... The brains processing power remains the same but the amount of information it has to sift through grows constantly creating "lag" as the storage reaches higher capacities.
ReplyDeleteInteresting but I have to question the conclusions based on said experiment. How well did the computer "act" as a brain? The study seems more indicative of exactly how a computer works rather than how the brain functions to be honest. Interesting read nonetheless.
Phil Tiongson I believe that is not very far away...
I already posted the link to the paper in the comments Jay Han, read that to understand more about this experiment.
ReplyDelete