Old is gold: The older you get, the smarter you become

London, Jan 7 (UNI) A wine gets better as it gets old and the same goes with the old age people as a study reveals that brain power actually increases with age, resulting from various experiences in life.

Contrary to the long-held assumption that brain power peaks between the ages of 18 and 26, the research indicates that it actually increases with age, the Daily Mail reported today.

The study conducted by Dr Lars Larsen from Denmark's University of Aarhus suggests that this kind of improvement may simply be the result of long years of practice.

As life experience grows, people face different challenges, and develop increasing verbal dexterity to describe the world and cope with it.

The research suggests that this development is so great it overrides the well-documented loss of brain cells that begins as we approach our thirties.

Dr Larsen carried out the study on 4,300 US servicemen who had undergone intelligence tests when they signed up aged around 20, and again 20 years later.

Comparing the two sets of results showed that mathematical skills among the servicemen - all Vietnam veterans - appeared to remain unchanged, rather than reducing with age, while their verbal skills actually improved considerably.

The study found that the Vietnamese veterans did better in intelligence tests 20 years after they first took them.

It concluded that verbal ability appeared to keep increasing over time, and there was not, as commonly assumed, a steady decline in brainpower from early adulthood onwards.

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