Our brains peak at 24: study

If you're older than 24, we have some bad news for you – you're over the hill in terms of brain performance, according to Canadian researchers.

Researchers from Simon Fraser University wanted to know when people's cognitive skills start declining and how they compensate. They studied 3305 people playing online multiplayer strategy gameStarCraft 2.

Players typically play for hours, so the researchers were able to access thousands of hours of strategic real-time cognition-based moves.

The researchers used statistical modelling to see how quickly and effectively the players responded to their opponents.

"After around 24 years of age, players show slowing in a measure of cognitive speed that is known to be important for performance," lead researcher and psychology doctoral student Joe Thompson said in a media release.

"This cognitive performance decline is present even at higher levels of skill."

But while the younger players were generally quicker, the older players appeared to play more strategically by using more shortcuts and sophisticated command keys.

"Our research tells a new story about human development," Thompson said.

"Older players, though slower, seem to compensate by employing simpler strategies and using the game's interface more efficiently than younger players, enabling them to retain their skill, despite cognitive motor-speed loss."

Thompson said the study showed that our brains are constantly changing.

"Our cognitive-motor capacities are not stable across our adulthood, but are constantly in flux, and that our day-to-day performance is a result of the constant interplay between change and adaptation," he said.

Thompson said our increasing use of computers is providing researchers with lots of data to study human behaviour.

The study was published in the journal PLOS One.

Source: Eurek Alert Author: Kimberly Gillan; Approving editor: Rory Kinsella