Posted on 01/20/2014 2:51:32 PM PST by Sir Napsalot
The brains of older people only appear to slow down because they have so much information to compute, much like a full-up hard drive, scientists believe.
Older people do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because they have more information in their brains, scientists believe.
Much like a computer struggles as the hard drive gets full up, so to (sic) do humans take longer to access information, it has been suggested.
Researchers say this slowing down it is not the same as cognitive decline.
“The human brain works slower in old age,” said Dr. Michael Ramscar, “but only because we have stored more information over time
“The brains of older people do not get weak. On the contrary, they simply know more.”
A team at Tübingen University in Germany programmed a computer to read a certain amount each day and learn new words and commands.
When the researchers let a computer “read” only so much, its performance on cognitive tests resembled that of a young adult.
But if the same computer was exposed to the experiences we might encounter over a lifetime – with reading simulated over decades – its performance now looked like that of an older adult.
Often it was slower, but not because its processing capacity had declined. Rather, increased “experience” had caused the computer’s database to grow, giving it more data to process – which takes time.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I could use a complete defrag and a larger L1 cache.
This explains a lot!!! What day is this :)
We Napsalot.
I know my hard drive is getting full and I’m a little short on RAM
That explains it!!
How do I get rid of spam and cookies?
We were talking on the phone and tried to recall something trivial....who played Captain Kirk...we BOTH said....darn...I know who you mean. And of course we could picture him.
We dropped it and went on to our next subject...all of a sudden, it was like pulling a card out of an index file....and I could see the name William.
Then my bud chimed in.....Shatner.
And that's what happens when you're old.
I believe we actually shove trivia into a trivia file when we get older and THAT'S WHY it takes so long to recover...it's in the brain's junk drawer.
“Older people do not decline mentally with age”
Yes, most do
Amen ... Amen ... mountainlion .... Your tagline says more than I shall ever!!!
My brain is acting like Kelly Bundy’s! For every new fact, I lose an old fact. It’s full to the top!
That’s what I tell my kids.
Doesn't explain my short term memory...though...
Where are my keys?
What time do you get off work again ?
What's for dinner again ?
I can remember where I put my keys... in 1975.
okay ... I’m going to ask why and then think but will not know why. Could you turn this around? Got any think pills?
Cute theory and analogy, but I think there are limits to comparing the human brain to a disc-drive. This article has passed those limits.
I knew that.
Also, people in their fifties and sixties are better at their jobs than college grads cause they have more life experience to process scenarios against to come up with the BEST solution. Kids might be faster because their slates are empty and info is kept in certain parts of the brain. As you age, you use more areas of the brain.
Hush ... please, be quiet. Don’t tell our secrets!!!
Every once in a while, it’s good to delete everything in the “TEMP” folder, too.... I do that with whiskey.
I believe this. Storing it away for future recall if I can remember where I store it!
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