A 10 year study shows civil servants begin to lose memory and reasoning power from age 45.
The study of more than 7,000 civil servants aged between 45 and 70 was carried out over a period of ten years by The Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health in France and University College London in the UK.
In that time, they found a 3.6% decline in the mental reasoning of men and women aged 45 to 49 and a decline of 9.6% in men aged 65 to 70 at the beginning of testing.
The researchers used a series of 65 verbal and mathematical reasoning problems which get progressively more difficult to test inductive reasoning, measuring the ability to identify patterns and infer principles and rules.
To test short-term verbal memory, the subjects were given a list of 20 words of one or two syllables and asked to write down all they could remember in any order within the next two minutes.
To test verbal fluency, they were asked to write down as many words beginning with the letter S within one minute and then as many animal names as they could, also in 60 seconds.
Finally there was a multiple choice vocabulary test of the meaning of 35 words.
All cognitive scores, except vocabulary, declined in all five age categories (age 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, and 65-70 at baseline), with evidence of faster decline in older people.
The scientists' conclusion is that deterioration of the brain sets in earlier than would have been expected.
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