As adults get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to have the right words at the right time because an active vocabulary is almost impossible. This is according to a recent study, although adults throughout their liveslearn more words and languages. Why this is the case was previously unclear. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the University of Leipzig have now discovered the possible cause. It is primarily the networks in the brain that change their communication over time, making them more inefficient.
How an active vocabulary changes with aging
The researchers examined these connections with the help of two groups - younger study participants between 20 and 35 years of age and older study participants between 60 and 70 years of age. Both groups of participants were asked to name words belonging to specific categories in the MRI machine, including animals, metals or vehicles. It turned out that both age groups were good at finding words. However, the younger ones were a little faster. The reason for this could be the different brain activities. On the one hand, it wasn't just the language areas themselves that were more active among the younger people. They also showed increased exchange within two crucial networks: the semantic memory network, where factual knowledge is stored, and the executive network, which is responsible for general functions such as attention and memory. However, for older people it was the opposite.
As age increased, executive areas showed greater activity, suggesting that the task was more difficult overall for these individuals. In addition, the exchange within the crucial networks was less effective than among the younger ones. The older group was most likely to benefit from exchanges between networks, but this was associated with losses. Communication within neural networks is more efficient and therefore faster than between them, according to the study authors. Why these activity patterns shift with age is not yet fully understood. One theory is that people rely more on their linguistic knowledge as they get older. This brings the exchange between networks into focus. Younger people, on the other hand, rely more on their quick working memory and cognitive control processes. At a structural level, the loss of gray matter in the brain, which is compensated for by the exchange between networks, could also play a rolethis studyshows.
