Feel Like Your Memory is Declining?

Yikes. New US research says  that after peaking at about age 22, our mind power starts to decline at about age 27.

Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought and memory all decline in our late 20s. Mind power exercises designed to stall or reverse the mental aging process and declining memory may need to start much earlier, he said.

His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols.  In nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22. The first age at which there was any marked declining memory was at 27 in tests of memory, speed of thought, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability.

But the good news is that  abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information increased until the age of 60 among those who continued to exercise their brain.