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Are you too young to be old?
27/08/2008 21:27 - (SA)
Michael Kahn
Gothenburg - The rapid deterioration of our
mental abilities as we age begins far earlier than scientists
had suspected, Swedish researchers said on Wednesday.
Simple tests of perceptual speed, spatial ability and verbal
function showed that some cognitive skills begin rapidly fading
nearly 15 years before death, said Valgeir Thorvaldsson, who
worked on the study.
"Previous studies have showed that the steep decline begins
around five years before death," said Thorvaldsson, a
psychologist at Gothenburg University in Sweden.
Mental peak and decline
"What we could
see in our data is that these changes occur much earlier than
thought."
Most people reach their mental peak between the ages of 35
and 40, then begin a steady decline that speeds up in the years
before death, he said.
The Swedish team wanted to test when that
acceleration starts, in order to better understand the loss of
mental ability.
In a 30-year study, the researchers tracked 288 men and
women from age 70 until death, measuring their mental skills at
regular intervals.
They found perceptual speed, a measure of how quickly people
can compare figures, deteriorated rapidly from about 15 years
before death. Spatial ability began to decline fast about eight
years pre-death, and verbal skills nearly seven years before.
"There is substantial acceleration in cognitive decline many
years prior to death among individuals without dementia,"
Thorvaldsson and colleagues wrote in the journal Neurology.
Healthy body, healthy mind
Lack of exercise and mental stimulation in old age, and
increasing health problems, may help explain what triggers that
final decline, Thorvaldsson added in a telephone interview.
Tracking when the rapid change begins could help doctors
identify people likely to encounter severe health problems in
the near future, he said.
"A change in verbal ability might therefore be considered a
critical marker for degeneration in health in older people,"
Thorvaldsson said.
- Reuters
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