Brains begin to slow down at age 24, study shows

Brains begin to slow down at age 24, study shows

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SALT LAKE CITY — A new study finds that “over the hill” may be closer to 20 than 40 — at least in terms of cognitive performance.

Canada's Simon Fraser University has conducted a series of tests using the game “Starcraft 2” to determine that brains are slowing down around age 24. Time between thought and reaction is growing as you get older.

According to the Washington Post, Starcraft is a hybrid of boxing, chess, Risk, Monopoly and Candy Crush. It requires immense concentration, with goals both long and short-term.

Researchers at Simon Fraser discovered the delay between a player looking at the game and performing an in-game action is lowest among 24-year-olds. The lag increases to nearly 20 seconds between looking and acting as a player approaches 39 years of age.

Discover Magazine points out the study is limited to gamers, but a large set — more than 3,000 players — ranging from 16 to 44 gave researchers a good idea of the cognitive speed of those gamers.

“Researchers found that older players compensated for their slower cognitive speed by making the game simpler,” wrote Carl Engelking at Discover. “At the broadest level, the findings indicate that our day-to-day cognitive performance is, at every age, the result of the constant interplay between biological change and behavioral adaptation.”

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Amanda Taylor

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