Traditionally it is thought that age leads to a steady deterioration of brain function, but new research in Topics in Cognitive Science argues that older brains may take longer to process ever increasing amounts of knowledge, and this has often been misidentified as declining capacity.
The study, led by Dr Michael Ramscar of the University of Tübingen, takes a critical look at the measures that are usually thought to show that our cognitive abilities decline across adulthood.
Ramscar's team used computers, programmed to act as though they were human, to read a certain amount each day, learning new things along the way. When the researchers let a computer "read" a limited amount, its performance on cognitive tests resembled that of a young adult.