At What Age Is Your Brain the Sharpest?

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhen Do Mental Powers Peak?Changes in the Adult BrainThe Brain During Later AdulthoodHow Researchers Looked at Mental SharpnessCrystallized Intelligence and Other Abilities

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

When Do Mental Powers Peak?

Changes in the Adult Brain

The Brain During Later Adulthood

How Researchers Looked at Mental Sharpness

Crystallized Intelligence and Other Abilities

At what age is your brain the sharpest? Researchers have found that while some mental abilities tend to peak earlier in life, many don’t reach their highest point until around age 40 or later.

It can be helpful to learn more about when your brain might be at its best. While you might feel that you’re already past your prime, evidence suggests that there are actually many different pinnacles when it comes to your mental powers.

At a GlanceThe brain isn’t static, which means that you are always learning, growing, and changing. Certain mental abilities do seem to reach their fullest point in certain periods of life. Information processing and short-term memory, for example, tend to be at their highest in early adulthood. Emotional understanding, on the other hand, becomes highest during middle age. While certain cognitive abilities do start to decline later in life, vocabulary and crystallized intelligence are at their best from the ages of 60 to 70.

At a Glance

The brain isn’t static, which means that you are always learning, growing, and changing. Certain mental abilities do seem to reach their fullest point in certain periods of life. Information processing and short-term memory, for example, tend to be at their highest in early adulthood. Emotional understanding, on the other hand, becomes highest during middle age. While certain cognitive abilities do start to decline later in life, vocabulary and crystallized intelligence are at their best from the ages of 60 to 70.

Research suggests that certain mental abilities reach their highest points at the following ages:

Some of the earliest intelligence tests simply categorized all people over 16 as “adults.” Today, researchers recognize that the brain continues to develop and change throughout early adulthood and that there are significant changes in how the brain functions as people age.

Still, we often tend to think of the adult brain as a relatively stable and unchanging thing, suggesting that various mental abilities are simply static, or even on the decline, throughout most of adulthood.

Conventional ideas aboutintelligenceoften suggest that people hit their mental peak fairly early in life and then follow a long, slow decline into old age.

There is also a tendency to believe that certain mental abilities, such asfluid intelligence, typically peak relatively early in adulthood. Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand, is often suggested to peak during late adulthood.

According to some experts, this long-held dichotomy might be far too simplistic. ResearchersJoshua Hartshorne, PhD, andLaura Germine, PhD, utilized a large pool of online participants to gather information about which ages that specific mental abilities are the strongest.

What they found instead was that there was a surprising consistency to when particular abilities typically peak. Not only that, but many abilities don’t actually peak until later in adulthood, upending previous help views suggesting that brains peak early in life and decline with age.

Some Mental Abilities Peak Much Later in Life

According to the study published in the journalPsychological Science, different aspects of fluid intelligence peak at different ages, with some abilities hitting their apex as late as age 40.

According to Hartshorne, that’s becausethe brain is always changing. No matter what your age, you’re going to be getting stronger in some areas and worse in others.

Hartshorne had previously found that visual short-term memory peaks in the mid-30s before beginning to go down.In another study, Germine found that the ability to recognize faces also improves until people are in their early 30s and then begins to gradually decline.

Digging deeper, the two began looking at archival data from older intelligence tests. What they discovered was that there appeared to be no single mental peak.

Instead, different abilities seemed to peak at wildly different and sometimes surprising ages. These results helped inspire their further investigation into how mental abilities change with age.

How did researchers look at how mental abilities change with age? They drew a large online sample of participants who utilizedbrain trainingwebsites. Using the approach, the researchers gathered data from nearly 50,000 people across a wide range of ages.

Four different types of cognitive tasks were used, as well as one task that looked at the ability to detect the emotional states of other people. Hartshorne and Germine’s earlier research had shown that these tasks measured mental abilities that change as people age.

The results revealed what the researchers called “considerable heterogeneity in when cognitive abilities peak.”

While the results that crystallized intelligence peaks later in life are consistent with earlier findings, this study implies that this peak occurs much later in life than previously believed. What could explain this late peak in mental abilities?

The researchers suggest that their results might be due to the fact that people today have more education, greater access to information, and more mentally demanding jobs than did previous generations of adults.

The results suggest that while older brains might indeed be slower,they are likely to be still more accurate, knowledgeable, and better able to assess the moods and emotional states of others.

The researchers note that while their study demonstrates that mental abilities peak at different ages in life, more research is needed to understand better how mental abilities change through life.

What Does This Mean For YouYour brain does not have a single “peak” age. At any point in your life, you are going to be getting better in some areas and worse in others. Knowing this can help you make the most of the skills you have now and know what to expect in the future. No matter what age you are, there will be new highs to look forward to when it comes to what your brain can do.

What Does This Mean For You

Your brain does not have a single “peak” age. At any point in your life, you are going to be getting better in some areas and worse in others. Knowing this can help you make the most of the skills you have now and know what to expect in the future. No matter what age you are, there will be new highs to look forward to when it comes to what your brain can do.

4 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Hartshorne JK, Germine LT.When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span.Psychol Sci. 2015;26(4):433-443. doi:10.1177/0956797614567339Trafton A.The rise and fall of cognitive skills: Neuroscientists find that different parts of the brain work best and different ages.MIT News. 2015.Germine LT, Duchaine B, Nakayama K.Where cognitive development and aging meet: face learning ability peaks after age 30.Cognition. 2011;118(2):201-210. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.11.002Shen L, Tang X, Li C, Qian Z, Wang J, Liu W.Status and factors of cognitive function among older adults in urban China.Front Psychol. 2021;12:728165. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.728165

4 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Hartshorne JK, Germine LT.When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span.Psychol Sci. 2015;26(4):433-443. doi:10.1177/0956797614567339Trafton A.The rise and fall of cognitive skills: Neuroscientists find that different parts of the brain work best and different ages.MIT News. 2015.Germine LT, Duchaine B, Nakayama K.Where cognitive development and aging meet: face learning ability peaks after age 30.Cognition. 2011;118(2):201-210. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.11.002Shen L, Tang X, Li C, Qian Z, Wang J, Liu W.Status and factors of cognitive function among older adults in urban China.Front Psychol. 2021;12:728165. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.728165

Hartshorne JK, Germine LT.When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span.Psychol Sci. 2015;26(4):433-443. doi:10.1177/0956797614567339Trafton A.The rise and fall of cognitive skills: Neuroscientists find that different parts of the brain work best and different ages.MIT News. 2015.Germine LT, Duchaine B, Nakayama K.Where cognitive development and aging meet: face learning ability peaks after age 30.Cognition. 2011;118(2):201-210. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.11.002Shen L, Tang X, Li C, Qian Z, Wang J, Liu W.Status and factors of cognitive function among older adults in urban China.Front Psychol. 2021;12:728165. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.728165

Trafton A.The rise and fall of cognitive skills: Neuroscientists find that different parts of the brain work best and different ages.MIT News. 2015.

Germine LT, Duchaine B, Nakayama K.Where cognitive development and aging meet: face learning ability peaks after age 30.Cognition. 2011;118(2):201-210. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.11.002

Shen L, Tang X, Li C, Qian Z, Wang J, Liu W.Status and factors of cognitive function among older adults in urban China.Front Psychol. 2021;12:728165. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.728165

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At a Glance#

Some Mental Abilities Peak Much Later in Life#

What Does This Mean For You#

At a Glance

Some Mental Abilities Peak Much Later in Life

What Does This Mean For You