Brain func­tion can start declin­ing ‘as early as age 45′ (BBC Health):

“The brain’s abil­ity to func­tion can start to dete­ri­o­rate as early as 45, sug­gests a study in the British Med­ical Jour­nal.  Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don researchers found a 3.6% decline in men­tal rea­son­ing in women and men aged 45–49. They assessed the mem­ory, vocab­u­lary and com­pre­hen­sion skills of 7,000 men and women aged 45 to 70 over 10 years.

The Alzheimer’s Soci­ety said research was needed into how changes in the brain could help demen­tia diag­noses.  Pre­vi­ous research had sug­gested that cog­ni­tive decline does not begin much before the age of 60.  But the results of this study show that it could in fact begin in mid­dle age.”

Link to Study: Tim­ing of onset of cog­ni­tive decline: results from White­hall II prospec­tive cohort study  (BMJ). From the Abstract:

“Objec­tives:  To esti­mate 10 year decline in cog­ni­tive func­tion from lon­gi­tu­di­nal data in a mid­dle aged cohort and to exam­ine whether age cohorts can be com­pared with cross sec­tional data to infer the effect of age on cog­ni­tive decline.

Main out­come mea­sure: Tests of mem­ory, rea­son­ing, vocab­u­lary, and phone­mic and seman­tic flu­ency, assessed three times over 10 years.

Results: All cog­ni­tive scores, except vocab­u­lary, declined in all five age cat­e­gories (age 45–49, 50–54, 55–59, 60–64, and 65–70 at base­line), with evi­dence of faster decline in older peo­ple. In men, the 10 year decline, shown as change/range of test×100, in rea­son­ing was −3.6% (95% con­fi­dence inter­val −4.1% to −3.0%) in those aged 45–49 at base­line and −9.6% (−10.6% to −8.6%) in those aged 65–70. In women, the cor­re­spond­ing decline was −3.6% (−4.6% to −2.7%) and −7.4% (−9.1% to −5.7%). Com­par­isons of lon­gi­tu­di­nal and cross sec­tional effects of age sug­gest that the lat­ter over­es­ti­mate decline in women because of cohort dif­fer­ences in edu­ca­tion. For exam­ple, in women aged 45–49 the lon­gi­tu­di­nal analy­sis showed rea­son­ing to have declined by −3.6% (−4.5% to −2.8%) but the cross sec­tional effects sug­gested a decline of −11.4% (−14.0% to −8.9%).

Con­clu­sions: Cog­ni­tive decline is already evi­dent in mid­dle age (age 45–49).”

To learn more, click on Build­ing a Cog­ni­tive Reserve — Inter­view with Dr. Yaakov Stern.

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