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Older brains great at learning, worse at filtering. Older adults often get a bad rap when it comes to brain power. While many reports have shown that brain function seems to get worse over time, it hasn’t been clear why this might be. A new study out this week might have the answer. According to the study, “adults who are well into their 60s and 70s can learn visual information just as well as whippersnappers in the 19-to-30-year-old range, but the elders pick up much more irrelevant visual information than do their younger counterparts. At least for visual perceptual learning, older brains remain changeable, but they may sacrifice long-term retention of information. And that’s because of a decline in the ability to suppress information that isn’t germane to the task at hand, according to the study.” The study emphasizes that our brains only have a limited capacity and that a key function needed to think is the ability to filter out information that’s probably irrelevant. This might seem like a bad thing, but “you could make the case that older drivers have an edge over the young when visual information matters. They may pick up subtle signals of potential hazards that youngsters suppress as ‘irrelevant.’ So, noticing a creeping shadow of a car might keep an older driver from executing a dangerous lane change.”
