A study in the British Medical Journal lit up the Internet last week with the conclusion that cognitive decline begins at age 45. While it’s true that some innate skills like memory and speed of reasoning fall off as we age, other aspects of intelligence related to learning and experience actually improve. These findings are part of a wave of new research on the psychology and neuroscience of middle age. Like baby boomers before them, Gen X-ers are learning that entering middle age often means getting squeezed between the demands of raising children, holding down a job and taking care of aging parents. But despite the high levels of stress, people in their 40s, 50s and early 60s generally have a happier outlook than their younger counterparts. They feel more competent and in control — that they can personally take steps to influence what happens in their life. They are also less neurotic, more open, reflective and flexible. (MORE: How Your Dreams Can Make You Smarter) Researchers suspect that one reason middle-aged people are more resilient is that their brains have learned to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Using brain imaging to peek inside that 3 lb. of gray and white matter, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that in younger adults, the amygdala, the brain’s emotional nut, was activated when they looked at upsetting as well as uplifting images. Adults in their middle and upper decades, by contrast, seemed to have the ability to screen out or tamp down negative emotions; their amygdalas lit up when they saw positive images but tended to ignore disturbing ones. In a 2011 study, researchers monitored involuntary facial expressions and eye blinks as a way of assessing responses to emotionally charged pictures. The biggest difference between younger and older participants turned out to be in their reactions to neutral images. The more mature subjects were more likely to put an optimistic spin on ambiguous information — they had what has been called the “positivity offset,” a predisposition for upbeat interpretations. People with a positivity offset, for … Continue reading The Advantages of the Middle-Aged Brain