Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Experimental findings

If you’re over 39 – and of the male persuasion - you might want to stop reading this now because what follows may be unsettling: new research from the University of California suggests that “at age 39 our brain reaches its peak speed, and it’s all downhill after that”. As reported on SlashDot: "The loss of a fatty skin that coats the nerve cells, called neurons, during middle age causes the slowdown, experts say. The coating acts as insulation, similar to the plastic covering on an electrical cable, and allows for fast bursts of signals around the body and brain. When the sheath deteriorates, signals passing along the neurons in the brain slow down. This means reaction times in the body are slower too." ‘The full findings are detailed in the online version of the journal Neurobiology of Aging – including the framework of the experiment: Scientists asked 72 men, ranging in age from 23 to 80, to tap their index fingers as fast as they could for 10 seconds. The researchers also did brain scans to measure in each subject the amount of myelin (the aforementioned fatty sheath). Both the tapping speed and the amount of myelin was found to decline "with an accelerating trajectory" after age 39. So this raises a few questions: Excluding morse operators, is there a section of the community that is more practiced in “tapping” eg perhaps because of work with calculators, texting, computers or computer gaming? Is there a similar difference in age performance in females - and why were females not included in the experiment? Is there a difference between males and females in “brain speed” … and development? Is there a cultural difference – or perhaps a cultural bias (as with IQ tests)? Is 72 really a large enough sample with which to aver that “brain speed declines at 39”? Study leader George Bartzokis, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, called the results "pretty striking" and said: "That may well be why, besides achy joints and arthritis, even the fittest athletes retire and all older people move slower than they did when they were younger." Others (including moi) might say: more work needed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Karen. First I find out I hit my sexual peak way back at 17, and now this! <sigh>