Does your ability to learn get progressively worse as you get older? Does it linearly decrease or does it decrease sharply once you hit a certain age, or does it decrease rapidly and then level off? Does the deteriotion affects your brain power more or memory or both equally? Thanks.
the current thought is yes there is some drop of. not that when you hit 30 you suddenly become dumb. just that you brain is more "plastic" when you are young. I mean that both in the neural and mental sense. I don't think anyone thinks there is a large change. neuroscientist used to think that the brain became pretty much fixed early in life. but now current thinking is that you retain some degree of plasticity well into adulthood. so there's not really that much of a diff in a 15 and 30yrold. but once you get up there, 60, then maybe it's a bigger difference. The usuall example is language. There is some drop off in ability to learn a new language as you age. there's thought to be some sort of critical period when you are young. It would be hard to tell the differnce between someone who learned spanish from birth and someone who began at 5. both would seem to be perfectly fluent. but if you wait until 12 or so, you probably won't learn it quite as well. not that you can't learn it very well, just not as well as learning at 5 or earlier. (note that these are estimate ages) memory definitly drops off a little. around when you become a senior citizen. I don't know alot about that line of research, other than that it does decline. it's probably related to a similar mechanism that is involved in Alzheimers. just not as widespread. that's my guess.
The brain actually changes when you learn. New neural paths are formed. Since the brain is growing most when you are yougner, of course it allows for faster and more change in that period. However, changes can occur throughout life.
Your neural connections don't form as easily when you get old, but I am wondering how bad it is. I have noticed a lot of people past the age of 40 say they can't learn new things anymore. Also they complain their memory start to go.
