World news

Mental skills fade earlier than thought LONDON — The rapid deterioration of our mental abilities as we age begins far earlier than scientists had suspected, Swedish researchers said yesterday. Simple tests of perceptual speed, spatial ability and verbal function showed that some cognitive skills begin rapidly fading nearly 15 years before death, said Valgeir Thorvaldsson, who worked on the study. “Previous studies have shown that the steep decline begins around five years before death,” said Thorvaldsson, a psychologist at Gothenburg University in Sweden. “What we could see in our data is that these changes occur much earlier than thought.”  Most people reach their mental peak between the ages of 35 and 40, then begin a steady decline that speeds up in the years before death, he said. The Swedish team wanted to test when that acceleration starts, in order to better understand the loss of mental ability. In a 30-year study, the researchers tracked 288 men and women from age 70 until death, measuring their mental skills at regular intervals.