With Age Comes Wisdom: Midlife Brains Sharper Than Younger Minds

Aging has long been a popular excuse for becoming scatterbrained. But new research suggests that memory and the mind improve as we get older, peaking as late as in the 60s.

Though the common belief is that brain cells die as people age, making them more forgetful, the reverse is actually true, according to a just-published book based on several recent studies.

In "The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain," New York Times deputy science editor Barbara Strauch says that not only do human beings keep their existing brain cells intact throughout their middle-age years but new ones also continue to form, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail.

Strauch bases her arguments on a mountain of compelling research, including the Seattle Longitudinal Study -- which has tracked about 6,000 people since 1956, testing them every seven years, and is the most expansive survey on the subject.

That study has shown that participants tended to score higher on cognitive exercises in their 40s and 50s than they did in their 20s, the Mail reported.

The older subjects performed better on vocabulary, spatial orientation, problem solving and verbal memory tests. They did worse when quizzed on perceptual speed (how fast they were able to push a button) and on their numeric abilities (how quickly they could calculate simple math).

"What we have learned from studying the time we call 'middle age' is that the changes that take place as we age give us the best brains of our lives," Strauch writes on her website.

Other occupational studies analyzing on-the-job performance have found that middle-aged employees have stronger skills than their younger counterparts.

In two separate trials, pilots and air traffic controllers were placed in simulators mimicking the real-world task of monitoring planes and keeping them a safe distance apart. The experienced participants did the job as well or better than the younger subjects, even though their reaction times weren't quite as fast.

So is the old adage true? Does wisdom really come with age?

"The elderly brain is less dopamine-dependent, making people less impulsive and controlled by emotion," Dilip Jeste, a professor at the University of California, said during a conference in Scotland. "Older people are also less likely to respond thoughtlessly to negative emotional stimuli because their brains have slowed down compared to young people. This, in fact, is what we call wisdom."

Researchers have recently discovered that though unused brain connections deteriorate or are lost, people retain most of their brain cells for their entire lives, the Mail says.

That could be in part because levels of myelin, the fatty material that protects brain cells and speeds up neurotransmissions, rise through midlife, according to several U.S. studies.

In one survey, authors found that myelin reached its highest levels in men who were 50 and in some instances in their 60s. Myelin bolsters brainpower by up to 3,000 percent, according to a neuroscientist who spearheaded the research.

Another possible explanation is that people develop the ability to use both sides of their brains as they get older rather than only one as they do when they're younger, according to the Mail.

Long-term memory also stays the same with age, while short-term memory declines. Researchers from New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine studied rhesus monkeys' brains, finding that the receptors in charge of long-term memory remained unchanged in the older animals. Half of the receptors responsible for remembering new information were lost in the aging monkeys, however.