Neuroscience and the aging brain
Synthesizing the data, I’ve been able to determine brain function commonly displayed at key phases in the human life cycle and map them to different cognitive abilities, strengths, and weaknesses (or decline). I define the different phases or windows like this:
- Undergrad brain: 18 to 20s
- Adult brain: 25 or so
- MBA brain: 30s
- Critical window: 40–45
- Strategic brain: 45–55
- Transforming brain: 55–65
- Chairperson’s brain: 65+
At each of these phases, the research shows us that many critical abilities may truly start to bloom, even as others decline:
- Undergrad brain: Working and detailed memory peaks when we are in our late teens and early 20s as the brain reaches peak processing speed, however, our ability to focus is not yet optimal.
- Adult brain: Neural connections now crystalize in the brain, forming a kind of foundation or “tree trunk” that is unlikely to change much as we age. However, everything that sits around this core will evolve and transform in response to new stimuli throughout life.
- MBA brain: Here we reach a point where short-term memory, including visual memory and facial recognition, is optimal, and we can manipulate what’s in our memory with optimal ease and at peak speed.
- Critical window: This is one of life’s great inflection points. In our mid-40s we have the potential to begin forming our mature mind. Rather than inevitable decline, this is when we have the opportunity to start building higher-order cognitive abilities that can become unique strengths as we get older.
- Strategic brain: In our late 40s and 50s, fueled by life’s experience, the brain can become far more adept at managing complexity. This is when we are also better at unshackling our thinking from external influence or groupthink – we can deploy our internal compass to greater effect. Now, our focus, strategic attention and ability to read emotion can peak, even as working memory or spatial awareness declines.
As we reach mid-life, business-critical cognitive capabilities may now start to peak. This is how things can pan out from 55 onwards:
Transforming brain:
Even as the brain’s processing speed starts slowing in mid-life, transformative thinking or integrative reasoning – what Sandra Bond Chapman of The Center for BrainHealth calls our “platinum cognitive function” – can come to the fore. Transformative thinking enables us to connect what we’ve learned in the past to new stimuli, information, and challenges, integrating experience to generate smarter, more creative solutions. Put another way, our greater experience can not only keep us relevant but empower us to transform the way we approach new challenges and problems.
Between 55 and 65, we have greater potential to integrate past and present to reformulate, redesign, move forward into new contexts, apply, and succeed.
This is when our transformative thinking can really peak. So too can innovation and the ability to make entirely new connections. In our mid-60s we have the potential to look at the world in ways that our younger, less complex form of mind could not. It turns out that creativity, originality, and insight – all of these good things – can reach their zenith at the average age of 62, fueled by our experience of life. Meanwhile, innovative and creative thinking are skills and capabilities that can be developed further and faster than any other cognitive ability, often blossoming as we age.
The research also shows that our ability to form relationships can improve as the brain ages; a function of our shifting perception of time. Simply put, we don’t have time to hang onto the grudges or upset that might have characterized our 30s.
Chairperson’s brain:
Focus and vocabulary will typically start to decline as we reach our 70s and upwards, however, we can excel in transformative thinking if we continue to nurture brain health. Moreover, the evidence suggests that our capacity for abstract thought can peak in this window, meaning that we have the potential to grasp complex ideas and concepts faster and with greater acuity at 70 than at 35.