A 25-year research program has unveiled key insights into how our brains age and what factors influence cognitive performance throughout life. The findings , published on 7 November 2024 in Genomic Psychiatry , draw from the Lothian Birth Cohorts (LBC) studies, which uniquely tracked participants' cognitive abilities from childhood through their eighth decade of life. Professor Ian Deary and Dr.
Simon Cox from the University of Edinburgh present discoveries that challenge conventional wisdom about brain aging. Their research reveals that approximately half of the variance in intelligence test scores in older age can be traced back to childhood cognitive ability—a finding that raises intriguing questions about the nature versus nurture debate in cognitive development . "What's particularly fascinating is that even after seven decades, we found correlations of about 0.
7 between childhood and older-age cognitive scores," explains Professor Deary. "This means that just under half of the variance in intelligence in older age was already present at age 11." Key findings include: Brain aging varies dramatically between individuals of the same age The study's unique strength lies in its use of the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947, which tested almost every child born in 1921 and 1936 in Scotland.
This comprehensive baseline allowed researchers to track cognitive changes across entire lifespans, revealing patterns previously hidden from science. Some of the most intriguing f.