That's stupid, though. If you can explain 11% of the variance of some noisy phenomenon like cognitive and behavioral flexibility, that's noteworthy. They tested both linear and quadratic terms, and the quadratic one worked better in terms of prediction, and is also an expression of a meaningful theoretical model, rather than just throwing higher polynomials at it for the fun of it. Quadratic here also would coincide with some homogenizing mechanism at the two ends of the age distribution.

From a completely unscientific but 'experienced' perspective I think the problem is that life just gets in the way as you get older, and you prioritize your own life rather than trying to learn.

Whether neuroplasticity means you can learn things later or not, the opportunity to learn things later just isn't there without effort.

Having a job, kids, a mortgage and no social obligation to learn in a structured and organized way probably impacts you more than anything neurological.

As long as you continue to learn new things, then no, it doesn't become harder with age. In fact, studies show that people who are lifelong learners can actually increase their ability to learn as they age. Learning, for example, a foreign language in later years has been shown to be just as attainable as in childhood, and might even give some protection against dementia. Your brain can actually become more plastic as you age if you continuously push it to do so.

The idea that learning capacity naturally* diminishes with age seems to be a widely accepted myth (which may have roots in sociological and cultural biases), and the opposite may actually be true.

e: those biases and environmental stressors may also contribute to people becoming less able – or less prone – to try, though, and if you don't use it, you might lose that plasticity. So keep learning.

I started doing Capoeira and learning Portuguese with 40 years. I am fluent in Portuguese now after three years. My Capoeira skills are still pretty basic, but I progress and for the first time in my life I feel like I really have a grasp on any kind of sports.

I also changed from marketing to IT last year and I am getting really good at what I do.

It helps if you have a reference system for your new knowledge. I studied computer science which helps in my new job and I had French in school which helps with Portuguese.

So don't worry. Keep learning, avoid stress and drugs and prioritize getting enough sleep. You'll be fine!

I’ve seen (and experienced in my fifties) that age does affect the working of your mind. I’d compare it to sleep deprivation. You know, when you’re young and reckless and haven’t slept well for a week, maybe pulling all-nighters for fun? It affects your concentration, your reflexes, and your general memory.

Age is like a mild sleep deprivation that gets a little bit worse each decade. It takes effort to stay lucid.

Keep learning, and it'll stay easier than if you didn't. See if you can find changes for the structure of what you're learning so you don't get too ossified about that, either. Like, have a decade where you focus more on sciences, one more for arts, one more for languages, one more for understanding people who are very different from you.. Maybe a decade is too big a chunk, but you get the idea.

I find that I get smarter as I get older, as stupid stuff that held me back gets discarded. You do have less energy I hear, but even there I think a fit 50 year old would be more energetic than a lazy 25 year old? Obviously having kids is a huge energy drain, but that's not technically aging, just correlation rather than causation.

So anyway even if this graphic were true, it would be irrelevant as the major factor seems to me to be a willingness to learn, only after which raw ability would come into play.

In your case the adage that now is the time to learn is true, but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. Once you shift your perspective that the time for hard work is over and the time for personal play is at hand - to watch more TV, play games, hang out with friends, etc. - then it's incredibly hard (most people phrase that as "impossible") to ever go back to that college mindset of "it's study time, let's go!!!". That's not even just human nature, but rather the raw physics of inertia coupled with adaptation that lowers energy requirements that were evolutionarily built into our brains and bodies.

Discipline is a mindset that is mostly independent of age, except it trends towards older as those who have seen how it works first-hand now realize its value (coupled with individual survival of those who have more rather than less of it, i.e. the most reckless die the earliest in life), plus also younger as people listen and thus benefit from the accumulated wisdom of others.

Neural plasticity isn't exactly the same as learning but, yeah, there seems to be a thing around 27 where neural plasticity seems to plateau a bit.

But I'm wondering if that's more the effect than the cause. Perhaps it's because a lot of people, up until they're around 25-30, have a very quickly changing life. Schools are changing, jobs are changing, people are changing. But when you start to get into late twenties, early 30's, most people already have a routine of some sort. And it would seem logical to me that it could mean lowered neural plasticity.

And perhaps it could come just as well if you started having as much variance and stimulation as earlier in your life. Perhaps not as much.

But yeah I don't think there's any sort of biological limit that you just can't learn things anymore. Never too old.

You have to surround the 2 with ^s:

R^2^ = 0.11

R^2^ = 0.11

Note that this'll bork if you put spaces between the carets: ^2 2^ gives you ^2 2^

Why does that fucking Thing require my Google account?

I don't think this is neuroplasticity, as much as it is having a broader experience to bring to bear. I have so much knowledge and experience with a variety of things that I can apply and relate to new skills to learn things fairly quickly.

I also find there's a ceiling on my abilities, like you mentioned. I'm never going to learn something to the same depth as someone who learns it as a kid and carries it forwards, things just don't seem to sink deep into intuition and instinct like that, but I can certainly pick up something well enough to enjoy it and enjoy the process of improving at it. I love learning new skills and pushing myself, and I don't mind the idea that that's the way to age gracefully and stay sharp.

Played a reflex-based video game against a teenager lately?

A lot of things are easier to learn when you have a base foundation.

Also, a lot of skills have interrelated mental pathways, so once you have enough exp with one, learning the other means, you are actually plasticising your brain, less than what you would have, had you learnt the other skill without knowing the first.

That's how a standard error with normal-ish data works. The more data points for the estimation of a conditional mean you have, the fewer of the data point will be within it. For a normal distribution, the SE=SD/√N . Heck, you can even just calculate which proportion of the distribution you can expect to be within the 95% CI as a function of sample size. (Its a bit more complicated because of how probabilities factor into this, but for a large enough N it's fine)

For N=9, you'd expect 26% of data points within the 95% CI of the mean For N=16, 19% For 25, 16% For 100, 8% For 400, 4% Etc

Out of curiosity: What issue did you take with the error margin not including most data points?

Nuh-uh.

I have no scientific basis for this, but my suspicion is that what you do with your brain is more important to cognition than whatever raw intelligence you start with. the more languages you study, the more music you play, the more subjects you study and skills you develop and hobbies you tinker with and deep conversations you have... you learn to learn, you learn to think, it all gets wired up and cross-connected and you become more than the sum of your parts.

how much decline is truly biological vs. being stuck in a rut?

also there's nootropics that could be helpful for concussion recovery/etc. but they haven't been too well-studied, there's many different ones with different sketchiness and sources aren't always trustworthy... but piracetam (iirc) is actually prescribed in the EU for recovery from brain injury, and it's fairly safe and well-studied. I'm not recommending it either way though.