Many older adults maintain and even improve their cognitive abilities

Many older adults maintain and even improve their cognitive abilities

Lydia Denworth

Watching my parents’ generation enter their 80s, I was struck by the dramatic differences between them: A few had dementia, but many had intact cognitive abilities, even if their knees and hips could not keep up with the speed of their thoughts.

That view runs counter to the prejudices about aging that have come to light in the early stages of the 2024 presidential race with older candidates, but which permeate society as a whole. “There’s this assumption that older people are all the same, that they’re frail, that aging is a steady decline,” says psychologist Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. That view, she says, is a big misconception.

Rather, the study highlights differences I’ve noticed: In your 40s, most people have similar cognitive abilities. Differences in cognitive ability emerge around age 60. By age 80, “the gap widens pretty dramatically,” says John Rowe, a physician and professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. While some groups will certainly decline with dementia or cognitive decline, 80-year-olds in general “contain some of the smartest people on the planet,” Carstensen says.

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Focusing only on those with poor brain health would miss more than half the population. A study led by Rowe found that in the six years after turning 75, about half of people saw little change in their physical, biological, hormonal, or cognitive functioning, while the other half saw substantial changes. A longer-term study followed more than 2,000 people, with an average age of 77, for up to 16 years. They found that three-quarters of people who did not develop dementia showed little cognitive decline.

Some of this has to do with genetics: Research on Successful Aging has found that 30 to 50 percent of physical and cognitive changes are due to genes. But factors like healthy living and self-esteem also play an important role. So, to some extent, “this is really good news, because it means you can actually take control of your old age,” Rowe says.

The study also dispels the myth that there’s nothing better for people over 70. “It’s clear that some things get better as we get older,” Rowe says. For example, our ability to resolve conflicts becomes stronger. Ageing is also associated with better overall emotional well-being, with older people being more emotionally stable and better at controlling their desires than younger people.

The normal aging process changes the brain, says neuroscientist Dennis Park of the University of Texas at Dallas. The frontal lobes shrink, and neurons and their connections become damaged. Cognitive processing slows down. But the slowdown is usually only a few milliseconds, and doesn’t necessarily result in meaningful changes to daily life. And to compensate, older people activate their brains more for tasks like reading. “Older people often create additional pathways for certain activities,” Park says. “Those pathways may not be as efficient as those used by younger adults, but they still work.”

The cliché that age brings wisdom is backed up by science. “Where older people really shine is in knowledge,” Park says. If you think of the brain as a computer, “there’s a lot more information on the hard drive,” she says. Older people can draw on experience and often have better solutions to problems than younger people. “That often gives older people an unexpected advantage,” Park says.

The advantage shows up in decision-making and conflict resolution. In one study, hundreds of subjects were asked to read stories about personal and group conflicts. The study, published in 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesfound that participants over 60 were more likely to value multiple perspectives, to compromise, and to acknowledge the limitations of their own knowledge. Carstensen’s observations reinforce these conclusions: “As people get older, the decisions they make tend to be ones that take into account multiple factors and multiple stakeholders,” she says. Older people are less likely than younger people to see the world as clearly black and white. Carstensen says that when responses in such studies are rated by observers who don’t know the participants’ ages, the older people’s answers are deemed more sensible.

Carstensen says this wisdom may be the result of a gradual shift in perspective: As we get older and become more aware that time is short, we tend to focus on the positive. A meta-analysis combining data from more than 7,000 older adults found that older people are significantly more likely than younger people to process information in favor of the positive over the negative.

The COVID pandemic has highlighted this contrast: In a survey of nearly 1,000 adults in 2020, Carstensen and his colleagues found that older adults were better able to cope with the stresses of the pandemic, despite being among the groups most at risk for health complications and death.

In fact, different parts of the body age at different rates in the same person. Someone who stumbles down the stairs may have creaking knees, not declining cognitive ability. For people with healthy brains, age alone may be considered a solid asset. “If you compare the types of decisions that presidents make and the types of skills that older people have versus younger people, I’d bet on older people,” Carstensen says.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views of the author are not necessarily those of Scientific American.