Adolescence continues into your 30s
Adolescence continues into your 30s; a recent study reveals four critical brain ages.
According to scientific research, the brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with significant turning points occurring around ages nine, thirty-two, sixty-six, and eighty-three.
Scans were performed on almost 4,000 individuals up to the age of 90 to show the connections between their brain cells.
The brain remains in the teenage stage until we "peak" in our early thirties, according to research from the University of Cambridge.
According to them, the findings may provide light on why the risk of dementia and mental health issues fluctuates throughout life.
The brain is always evolving in reaction to new information and experiences, but research indicates that this is not a single, seamless pattern from birth to death.
Rather, these are the five stages of the brain:
Childhood: from birth to nine years of age
Adolescence: nine to thirty-two
Adulthood: ages 32 to 66
Early ageing: between 66 and 83
Late ageing: starting at age 83
"Over the course of a lifetime, the brain rewires. Dr. Alexa Mousley, the study's principal author, told the BBC, "There are fluctuations and phases of brain rewiring; it's always strengthening and weakening connections and it's not one steady pattern."
Although some people would arrive at these landmarks sooner or later than others, the researchers found it remarkable how distinctly these ages stood out in the data.
Because of the large number of brain scans included in the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, these patterns have only recently come to light.
The five stages of the brain
Childhood: The brain grows quickly at this time, but it also thins down the excess synapses—connections between brain cells—that were formed at birth.
During this phase, the brain becomes less effective. Instead of moving directly from point A to point B, it functions similarly to a youngster wandering through a park and going anywhere they feel like.
Adolescence: From the age of nine, when the brain's connections go through a phase of brutal efficiency, this quickly alters. "It's a huge shift," Dr. Mousley described the most significant transition between phases of the brain.
Additionally, mental health concerns are most likely to start at this time.
Adolescence naturally begins around the time of puberty, but the most recent research indicates that it concludes far later than previously thought. Before neuroscience revealed it persisted into your 20s and now early 30s, it was believed to be limited to adolescence.
The brain's network of neurones only becomes more effective throughout this stage.
It is "very interesting" that the brain remains in the same phase between the ages of nine and thirty-two, according to Dr. Mousely, who noted that this supports numerous measures of brain function that indicate it peaks in your early thirties.
Adulthood: The brain then enters its longest era, which lasts for three decades, and experiences a period of stability.
Compared to the previous fireworks, change is slower during this period, yet we witness a reversal of the gains in brain efficiency.
According to Dr. Mousely, this "aligns with a plateau of intelligence and personality" that many of us have seen or encountered.
Early ageing: This begins at age 66, but the deterioration is gradual. Rather, the brain's patterns of connections are changing.
The organ gets more and more divided into areas that collaborate closely, much like band members beginning their own independent endeavours, rather than functioning as a single, cohesive whole.
This is the age at which dementia and high blood pressure, which have an impact on brain health, begin to manifest, even though the study examined healthy brains.
Late ageing: We reach the last stage at age 83. Because it was more difficult to locate healthy brains to scan, there is less data than for the other groups. The alterations in the brain are considerably more noticeable than those associated with early ageing.
The way the various "ages align with a lot of important milestones" like puberty, health issues later in life, and even the fairly significant social upheavals in your early 30s like parenting, according to Dr. Mousely, truly shocked her.
"A really cool study"
There will be issues like the effects of menopause, but the study did not examine men and women independently.
"Many neurodevelopmental, mental health, and neurological conditions are linked to the way the brain is wired," stated Duncan Astle, a professor of neuroinformatics at the University of Cambridge and member of the research team. In fact, problems with attention, language, memory, and a wide range of behaviours are predicted by variations in brain circuitry.
"This is a very cool study highlighting how much our brains change over our lifetimes," stated Prof. Tara Spires-Jones, director of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences, who was not involved in the study.
She added the results "fit well" with current understanding of brain ageing, but cautioned "not everyone will experience these network changes at exactly the same ages".
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