Like the rest of our bodies, the brain develops as we age – but the brain is arguably one of the more important parts of the body.
You may be wondering why it’s easier to learn a foreign language in childhood and harder to remember your day-to-day tasks as you reach your later years.
Post-puberty, the brain continues to develop as brain tissue in the prefrontal cortex increases connections, the video explained.
Come your 30s, the brain reaches ‘full development’, while white matter, which sends electrical signals between different parts of the brain and spinal cord, reaches its highest volume come the age of 40.
‘Middle-aged’ brains have also learnt to ‘minimize the negative’, with scientists discovering the amygdala, the part of the brain that deals with emotion, lights up when younger people look at both positive and negative images, The Economist video added.
But for older adults, it reacts much less to negative images, likely because the majority of people tend to be more resilient the more the age.
Explaining what happens at our mid-30s, Mindea said: “Many people experience shifts in cognitive priorities, often focusing more on what to contribute to the next generation and on personal self-reflection.”
“This is also when some experience what’s called ‘cognitive peak’ – especially in areas like verbal memory and accumulated knowledge.”
As for picking things up more easily as a child, our brains go through a period of ‘pruning’ once we progress into adolescence, with unused neural connections from our childhoods going into ‘atrophy’.
Mindea added that the brain ‘gradually atrophies or shrinks’ once we pass the age of 65, which basically means we can look forward to a decline in our problem solving and processing abilities from then.