Until a few decades ago it was taken for granted that brain performance declined with age. New findings from the neurosciences show today that such a “law of nature” does not exist. Whether and how the performance of the brain decreases, remains stable or even increases, however, depends heavily on social factors and training – the human brain is a social organ.
“The youth have the prerogative of radicalism, with age comes life experience.” (Prof. Dr. Ingolf Ahlers)
Table of Contents
- Decreasing brain performance in old age?
- A complex system
- The development of the brain
- Selective reminder
- Loss of substance in the brain
- What happens to our brain in old age?
- “Typical” signs of aging
- Age or social environment?
- The library is getting bigger
- Passing on traditions
- Indirect effects of age
- Brain training
A complex system
The human brain is an extremely complex system that is constantly changing. The factors that influence this development include the genetic basis, psyche and body, the social environment, i.e. relationships, relatives, friends, community and society, as well as the natural environment, i.e. climate, weather, air, forests, seas, etc. , the artificial environment such as technology and science and the world view, i.e. philosophy, ethics, ideology, religion etc. All these factors are related to one another, and the brain develops in their interactions.
The brain is an extremely complex system, the development of which is influenced by a large number of different factors. (Image: eranicle / fotolia.com)
The development of the brain
The human brain develops even before birth. The embryo’s brain grows in the first three months. It is extremely sensitive at this early stage. Infectious diseases in the mother can damage the unborn child’s brain, as can harmful substances.
The brain is a “super organ”, an extreme development comparable to the trunk of the elephant or the brain of the giraffe. In contrast to the brains of reptiles, it is far from finished at birth; its complexity and size mean that it continues to grow and develop after birth. Many nerve pathways only develop in the two years of life, only now do the nerve fibers become thicker, and only gradually does the toddler react to more and more environmental stimuli.
While a horse foal stands and runs on its own two feet shortly after birth, a person needs up to two years to be able to walk alone. Human memory develops even up to the age of five, which also explains why we have few real memories of our first time in the world.
Children only develop social behavior and slow, i.e. logical thinking at the end of this initial phase. Both take shape in the interplay of biological development and the social environment. Small children go through a “magical phase” in which internal experience and external environment are not yet separated for them.
In short, that’s the time when they still believe in Santa Claus. Systematic thinking emerges between the ages of five and seven. It starts, for example, with six-year-olds thinking about how Santa Claus can come to all the children in one evening, where the presents are made, whether Santa Claus has a special vehicle, etc. In this development of logical thinking, they are also formed linguistic, spatial and mathematical skills.
We speak of the “defiant phase” of three-year-olds. I-consciousness is now developing. The young person realizes that he is a person and that this I has different needs and interests than other people.
Systematic thinking emerges between the ages of five and seven. (Image: sebra / fotolia.com)
Selective reminder
The brain works selectively. It only saves what we use and / or exercise regularly. Meanwhile, in long-term memory there remains a “store” of potentially useful experiences, images and patterns that we can fall back on in an emergency – that is, when we activate certain stimuli.
Memories are not objective, they are tied to a specific purpose. The patterns that are stored in the synapses do not reflect an actual process, but rather storylines recognized as useful. We find ourselves reading old diaries that the reality described in them looked different from the stories we tell about that time. This is not necessarily because we lie, i.e. consciously rearrange experiences, but because the brain arranges our memories in such a way that they fit into our respective life questions.
This applies to both positive and negative. A person who suffers from depression in the clinical sense will repeatedly find confirmation in his “past” that a “life in hell” was preprogrammed for him; a bipolar in his manic phase, on the other hand, always finds “evidence” that he is “chosen to save the world”.
Loss of substance in the brain
Until the age of 12, the cell bodies and connections between the nerves increase continuously. The brain is overflowing with new synapses. The synapses develop by around mid-twenties, and from the age of 40 we break down brain cells.
The prefrontal cortex continues to form until the second half of twenty somethings. The psychologist Kristine Walhovd from Oslo found that the brain regions are the first to age and the last to develop. In particular, the function of the frontal lobe declines, and this controls attention; in addition, the hippocampus, where long-term memory is located, shrinks.
The nerves that network the regions of the brain generally increase in size until the 1940s, then decline. This mainly affects the speed with which we process mental challenges, but not necessarily our general ability to do so. Communication between the individual “task areas” of the brain no longer runs smoothly.
From the age of 40, our brain cells slowly break down again. (Image: goanovi / fotolia.com)
What happens to our brain in old age?
With age, the density of the synapses decreases, as does the number of nerve fibers covered with myelin. Instead, the density of the neurofibrils increases, and a protein accumulates with it, which in large quantities leads to the death of nerve cells.
The brains of people who have excellent memories in old age have fewer accumulations of these “tangles” than people whose brains have aged normally.
“Typical” signs of aging
It is typical of an “aging brain” that older people have problems memorizing and / or perceiving different things at the same time. Short-term memory declines. We have to create a note for the daily routine, while we could easily memorize the relevant points beforehand.
Don’t panic. It can be natural wear and tear. Nevertheless, we should not accept it as a “law of nature”, because then firstly we encourage this process if it is natural aging, and secondly we may fall into the trap of ignoring other factors that are at most indirectly related to age.
Psychological problems, medication, problems with the metabolism and blood circulation, depression, stress and loneliness are also possible triggers for the “age-related absent-mindedness”. The wrong diet can also cause supposedly age-related problems with the short-term memory.
Age or social environment?
For example, when many people retire, they lose the usual daily rhythm to which the synapses in the brain have aligned. Stimuli to activate patterns in the synapses such as the daily conversations with colleagues at the workplace.
Many older people lose their usual daily rhythm when they retire. This can, for example, lead to the overview of the days of the week getting confused. (Image: highwaystarz / fotolia.com)
For example, if a retiree in his mid-60s forgets what day of the week it is or no longer remembers a conversation he had the week before, this may also be due to the fact that the stored patterns in the synapses are missing corner points to get into action to kick. At work it was necessary to know whether it was Monday or Sunday, if every day is “Sunday” it hardly matters.
If an old person forgets what he wanted to do more and more often, it may also be because he has reconditioned himself in his life tasks and the brain classifies the things done as “not important”.
The library is getting bigger
So do we get dumber with age? The linguist Michael Ramscar from Tübingen questions this. According to him, the performance of the brain does not decrease, but the old brain accesses a much larger store of knowledge. So it takes more time because it has a large amount of data to process: If someone analyzes three dozen primary and secondary sources for an article, it takes longer than if he just summarized a book.
According to Ramscar, old people would not be more forgetful, but would have to process an enormous wealth of experience.
At the same time, according to Ramscar, older people can better organize and access the knowledge they have. In the study developed by his team, young adults remembered word pairs regardless of whether they made sense or not, while older adults mainly remembered matching word pairs.
If we assume that the human brain develops as a social organ, the aging processes correspond to the tasks in the phases of life. If the frontal lobe develops into the mid-20s and attention decreases in later years, it meets the needs of young people “going out into the world”.
In other words: The synapses still absorb a lot of new information and form them into patterns that keep changing. Man is not yet determined in his life path. New experiences are added, he changes his perspective on life. For the elderly, however, the challenge is not so much to keep collecting new experiences, but to organize the experiences they have already made and implement them sensibly.
He does not learn new things all the time, but draws lessons from what he has learned. And one lesson is to distinguish the important from the unimportant.
Passing on traditions
Possibly this is a special adaptation of the primate brain. In primates other than humans, too, grandmothers and grandfathers play an essential role in the cohesion of the group. They do not produce any more offspring themselves, but pass on their knowledge to the children and keep traditions alive.
The knowledge stored in the old primate brain and the extreme receptivity of the young primate brain went hand in hand. There are old females and males who help shape the “upbringing” of the young not only in humans, but also in gorillas, green monkeys and rhesus macaques.
In humans, these peculiarities of the brain of old people play a special role. Human societies exist to a large extent through the transmission of information. People reproduce spiritually to a great extent. In many indigenous cultures, people “in the forecourt of death” are considered to be those who pass on tradition: only now, when they can no longer produce any physical offspring, do they pass on their “spiritual seed”.
Indirect effects of age
The human brain is not an isolated organ, and “age-related wear and tear” of the brain is often only indirectly related to age. For one thing, old people are susceptible to diseases that can affect the brain but are not, in the strict sense, ailments of the brain itself; on the other hand, the social environment and training play an essential role.
The brain needs training, and experiences stored in the unconscious are only activated if there is a stimulus to do so. The more intensive our social relationships are, the more we can tie in with stored patterns and develop new patterns even in old age.
Many older people withdraw and are given less incentive for “brain work” due to the lack of social contact. (Image: De Visu / fotolia.com)
A problem with many old people is that they are becoming increasingly socially isolated. But if you sit alone in your apartment and look at the photo wallpaper, you inevitably get less social input than someone who is encouraged to “work their brains” through diverse friendships, acquaintances, partners and relatives. But that has little to do with biological age at first.
If physical complaints are added in old age, this intensifies the “aging process” of the brain. It is no longer easy to get on your bike and take a lap through the city park.
If the everyday stimuli of the environment are no longer present, perceptions and stimuli in the brain are broken: the scent of apple blossoms on the riverbank, the rain on the face, the sound of muddy earth on the shoes, also the conversations of the joggers overheard by chance, the chance conversation with a neighbor walking her dog. The brain receives fewer sensory stimuli and in the long run it starves to death. This is not due to biological age, but to living conditions.
Then old people suffer more from problems with blood circulation and metabolism, and since the brain is dependent on blood and the body’s own substances, hormones and vitamins, such problems have a direct effect on its performance. Elderly people also often have trouble sleeping. Irregular sleep, sleep deprivation, or sleep problems also decrease brain performance.
Brain training
Bookstores are overflowing with pseudoscientific guides that say we would only use 10% of our brains combined with brainwashing how we could develop “super brains” if we just followed de facto religious instructions.
That’s nonsense. The human brain is never inactive, even when it is asleep, and the areas of the brain are busy. So it is important how we use the already active brain. Social relationships are essential for old people: our brain enters into a relationship with other people and learns from communicating with other people how to shape this learning experience.
The brain can be trained at any age, for example by discovering and exploring new areas. (Image: pikselstock / fotolia.com)
It is very important to develop meaningful life concepts in old age. “Aging of the brain” can also be a reaction to senselessness. This is not a charitable concern, but tangible biological facts: The brain releases neurotransmitters, which dissolve old structures and make new solutions possible. When an old person retires from work, the brain works on a new information and data network. But if there are not enough new stimuli, then only a few patterns necessarily form that we can access.
The following applies: The brain can be changed through training, the social environment and the external environment – at any age. These factors are related to each other. A person can train his brain in everyday life just by looking for unfamiliar experiences. They can be very banal, for example choosing a new route for your daily walk or drinking your coffee in a bar where you’ve never been before.
The social environment is essential for brain performance in old age. If other people show us positive feelings, we get friendly feedback and genuine interest, then our dopamine levels rise. When we are doing well, the brain forms new networks
