When does our brain start going downhill?

As I age, I get the feeling that my brain isn’t working as well as it used to and it needs charging up, just like my mobile phone.
But from what age does our brain start to degenerate?
Scientists have recently cast doubt on a previously held belief that the processing speed of our brain starts to become less effective from the age of 20.
Until now, it’s been thought that our cognition level is at its highest when we’re 20 and goes down from there. Research lead by German scientists seems to be giving some hope to older people who worry about increasing forgetfulness or reduced brain power. People like me!
As we age our brains do get smaller, particularly in the frontal cortex. In fact, the volume of the brain and/or its weight declines with age at a rate of around 5% per decade after the age of 40. As our veins and arteries age and our blood pressure rises the possibility of having a stroke increases and memory decline also occurs.
Nevertheless, the German research shows that cognitive skills can still be powerful at the age of 60 and do not necessarily deteriorate before then.
The German-lead study was based on data from over 1.1 million people, aged between 10 and 80 years old. The results show that the speed with which our brain can process information remains relatively constant until the age of 60, but does, however, begin to slow down once we get into our 70s.
The research shows that our mental processing speed actually increases in our 20s and remains high until 60. The speed of information processing in the tasks performed in the study barely changed. Older people do take longer to make decisions, but apparently this was because we become more cautious, and less impulsive and reckless as we get older.
I’m not sure if that’s true in my case, however. I’ve always found it hard to make decisions about anything!

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