The aging mind: neuroplasticity in response to cognitive training (2013) | Hacker News Reader

The aging mind: neuroplasticity in response to cognitive training (2013)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

204 pointsqrian117 comments

FYI article is from (2013).

I had an interesting personal experience recently. I’ve been trying to learn Russian from Duolingo and to better enable myself, got a few books on Russian grammar etc. I read them at night in bed. While I was trying to memorize a grammatical rule by reading over it a few time. I suddenly had a recollection from a early childhood. First I had this visceral feeling inside. Very similar how a smell might trigger a feeling of memory inside. Then I remembered something very vividly that I had not thought about or had completely forgotten. It almost felt like while my brain was trying to memorize something, it reactivated something inside.

I’m now curious if this was a random coincidence or if memorizing something new will help me keep older memories or reactivate some forgotten ones.

You tried to allocate memory for the new information, and exceeded your current max heap. When you remembered that thing for long ago, it's because your GC scanned it :)

I've wondered something about dreams that if taken as explanation is very similar

Conjecture: during sleep the mind moves short term to long term memory, when formed, the memory fires adjacent nuerons and these fired nuerons form the dream

In your case, seeking an old memory may have fired other adjacent nuerons, perhaps ones that have been dormant for some time

I will do this when trying to remember something.. think around an memory and my own exposure to it contextually hoping to indirectly find the desired memory

In general, this happens to me while trying to fall asleep. Very random, distinct, sharp and lucid childhood memories of certain points in time, though I do have be drifting into sleep. I've certainly never had it when trying to actively memorize new material.

Same here. Can actually consciously try to remember events 20+ years ago and often that will trigger a memory I haven’t recollected in a very long time. A person, an event, etc. Happens very well when I just wake up.

I sometimes wonder if such sudden recollections are the brain's mechanism of saying "do you want me to keep this in memory, or should I throw it away?"

Nah, its just performing dropout.

Recalling a memory strengthens it, and creates new associations to call it up, so probably not.

From what I understand, your brain stores I information by association. So it's possible that your brain was activating an old neaural pathway that had a relevant connection to what you were learning.

As an example, if you have trouble remembering people's names. Picture the face of someone you remember with the same name on top of the new persons face. This will cut out a lot of work for your brain, as it will utilize an existing pathway.

This is why something random can sometimes trigger a memory we didn't expect. It's more complicated then that of course, but that's the idea.

layman opinion: no it's not, your brain is a graph compressor.

I had episodes of minute memory losses in the last years. And everytime I gathered the answer after long time by having flashes of things similar in nature. Trying to remember a name, I went through a stream of wrong names of people of the same origin, and same prefix (bou) until the right suffix hit me.

When I think of my current partners name, I sometimes cycle chronologically through all past partners until I get to hers. Normally in my mind, but sometimes out loud.

She doesn't like that.

That should be a fairly deep rooted memory. If you're having difficulty recalling, that is concerning. I respectfully urge you to consult with a neurologist or at least your GP.

I'm still pretty young and have had a somewhat robust love life. I sometimes wonder if I am not just audiating the brains internal lookup of the information anyway. If I am focusing then name recal is normal thankfully!

This paper looks at the benefits of "engagement in an environment that requires sustained cognitive effort". This seems to support the idea that playing music might be one of the better things you can do to maintain or improve cognition based on this article:

https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/the-benefits-of-playing-mus...

(BTW I'm 52 and have played drums since I was 12. I think that counts as being a musician. But I'm not sure...)

Reminds me of the old joke:

What do you call somebody who hangs out with a group of musicians?

A drummer.

Heh. Or, "How do you know the stage is level?"

"The drummer* drools out of both sides of his mouth."

*or bass player

If we're telling mean musician jokes, my favourite:

Q. What do you call a bass player without a (girl|boy)friend?

A. Homeless.

How do you know when a drummer is at the door?

The knocking speeds up.

How do you know when a singer is at the door?

They don't have the key, and they never know when to come in.

I recently attended a talk by Dr. Nina Kraus of Northwestern University [1], her main thesis was exactly that, based on evidence from many studies: playing music (even badly) has an incredible effect on cognition. In particular on speech comprehension, which of course has a strong relationship with rhythm [2].

[1] http://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INt4GGr-EGU

Did singing count? Improvisation (on an instrument)?

Or did it have to be more formal, e.g. sight-reading; aiming at a specific performance.

Found her page, but there's a lot of material there.http://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu/projects/music/index....

Does programming count as requiring sustained cognitive effort?

Time to bust out the math books and get training I guess. 40 and feeling dumb as shit lately. Forgetting things I’d never forget before. Trouble concentrating for many hours at a time like I used to be able to. Etc.

Very suspicious that it’s the statin I started 5 years ago. My doctor says “don’t believe the statin skepticism. You’re just getting older”. Fahk.

Doesn't the brain thrive on cholesterol? I thought I read this somewhere. Also, the study mentions that your brain training tasks should be something you enjoy, so not sure about the math books route.

Brain is made of it, so the anti-statin story goes.

Math is fun.

Here's a prime example of the typical article suggesting that statins are bad for the brain:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20170...

On one hand author argues that dietary cholesterol doesn't pass the blood brain barrier. Author also says that low brain cholesterol should not be a problem because some vegans have high cholesterol. Well, that high cholesterol is from measuring the blood, so seems like a conflicting argument.

I may be naive, but math seems to be the subject with the post potential for transfer.

Ketones, too. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=ketosis+neuroplas...

Ketosis is already famously-known for its ability to significantly placate epilepsy. There might be some "there" there.

As for me I just take good old piracetam every day (for more than 10 years already, huge doses occasionally) and feel great. Sadly it is not and will never be approved by FDA as no corporation is interested in funding credible research. Emoxypine is another substance that can be good do take regularly (though in recommended doses only, it is not nearly as dosage-flexible as piracetam AFAIK) if your brain fails to get the amounts of oxygen it needs.

are there any side effects( if any) that you've noticed on such long term use?

DISCLAIMER: I have no medical license or education. All my knowledge comes from Wikipedia, Reddit and my personal experience. The below is not a qualified medical advice nor a credible research result.

No side effects specifically related to long term use are known so far. Regular doctor check-ups don't show anything that could be related. Stopping taking piracetam (I do it occasionally for a month or two as a safety measure) is also never a problem - absolutely no withdrawal of any kind. The Russian instruction manual put in every box of piracetam there specifically recommends (at least it did a decade ago) to start taking it regularly as you reach 50 and keep taking it forever to fight brain aging, European instructions (piracetam is an approved over-the-counter medicine in some and a prescription medicine in others) lack this recommendation and recommend to avoid taking piracetam for periods exceeding 8 weeks without a doctor recommendation.

As for short-term side-effects (that can be experienced until a pill wears off) - it can increase anxiety/aggressiveness/paranoia etc slightly (which can affect you occasionally if you loose conscious awareness of the fact your feelings are altered by the substance, as long as you are conscious about it it is rarely a problem) and make it harder to fall asleep so don't take it at evenings and avoid it if you are prone to anger. Keeping your mouth shut is also harder under piracetam, make sure you don't tell people anything you shouldn't.

You may need (not necessarily, it depends) to be taking piracetam (I take 1200 mg 1-2 times a day usually, up to 8 times a day occasionally) for up to some weeks before you start feeling the difference.

WARNING: I'd also warn against taking it before driving (or try it with a bicycle first at least and make sure you do good at maintaining proper concentration), especially if you have ADHD - a piracetam-stimulated mind can start wandering between random ideas too vigorously occasionally and you can forget to pay enough attention to the road.

It also makes many brain-affecting substances (including alcohol) act stronger and wear-off faster and cures/prevents (not entirely but the difference can hardly go unnoticed) hangovers.

It plays amazingly well with alprazolam by eliminating drowsiness, maintaining sharp mind and vigor while alprazolam keeps your mood good and helps to concentrate. I believe it may also fight addiction/tolerance development but I have never been taking alprazolam or anything like that long enough to develop addiction.

It is also important to mention that modern piracetam derivatives (like carphedon or sunifiram) differ significantly and you can't extend all the above to them. They act instantly and produce great synergic effect with piracetam (piracetam + carphedon feels like enlightenment the first time you experience that) but are much less dosage-safe (never overdose sunifiram!) and play different with other stuff e.g. carphedon does NOT play nice with benzodiazepines according to my experience (but sunifiram does, sunifiram + piracetam + alprazolam = great productivity; and sunifiram is also known to increase neuroplasticity in particular AFAIK).

WARNING: I have no idea how any of the substances mentioned above may interact with statin or anticoagulants or affect blood pressure, please be very careful and consult with you doctor if you can (no american doctor can recommend piracetam or anything like that officially as these are not approved by FDA but maybe they should have a chance to warn you if your condition or the medicines you take are known to be incompatible with piracetam).

As additional anecdata ive tried the gamut of piracetam, oxiracetam, aniracetam, pramiracetam, coluracetam, sulbutiamine, etc. Out of them all i found oxiracetam to be the easiest to use since it doesnt require rather large doses or extremely small ones. I did notice that racetams made it easier to sustain focus but gave me a bit more tunnel vision, it was easier to miss things that were obvious in a more relaxed state. After prolonged use (more than 5 days or so) I would become somewhat more emotionally blunted and irritable. Im also a smoker and would recommend not mixing nicotine with racetams since they both impact nicotine acetylcholine receptors which are involved in many places but specifically in muscle control. On higher doses combined with more cigarettes I noticed my muscles would be extra tight and stiff which caused me to eventually discontinue use. Using moderate doses every other day without smoking I didnt notice any ill effect physically and felt I got more out of it by alternating states. Its hard to pin the emotional aspect on it as it could have been due to other life factors, just made existing feelings more apparent.

Isn't plain piracetam (or something else, you name it if you happen to know) the best when the primary task is to increase cerebral circulation, maintain neuroplasticity and fight brain aging rather than to get stimulated or improve concentration quickly?

Where did you find out about Emoxypine? Do you have any reliable references about this?

I have asked a friend of mine to bring some from Russia - it is available over the counter there under the brand names of "mexidol" and "mexiprim". Amazon.com search for emoxypine also yields a number of offers. AFAIK it is produced in Germany and is also available there under some brand name I don't know. No world-class credible research seems available but Russian and Chinese research says it is safe and helps brain to fight suffocation and oxidative stress. What the Wikipedia article says and my own experience is all I know about it. A friend of mine has told me he has taken too much of it (4 pills at a time) once and it made him very drowsy. I have never experienced any undesirable effects myself (because I've never tried taking more than 2 pills at a time probably).

I take emoxypine when I start feeling mild yet chronic feeling of suffocation during summer heat peak weeks. Walking in the woods helps even better but I don't have time to just walk there all day long. This happens to me every summer since my very childhood. I am not really sure if it actually works or if it's just a placebo effect (unlike to piracetam - I am absolutely sure piracetam effect is real).

Are you in shape and do you exercise?

Nope, unfortunately. On the to-do list before stopping statins. Just need to figure out how to not spend 70hrs / wk at work.

How long have you been doing those 70 hours weeks? Some of what feels like decline might be exhaustion or burnout.

Work is the default, and it will consume as much time as you let it.

In my experience there's nothing more to figure out than setting the boundary and enforcing it on yourself.

Having said that, everyone has time to do as many pushups as they possibly can on a daily basis. This alone will make a substantial difference, and after months or years of doing this, you'll be both feeling better and in a much better position physically to do something more time-consuming like running.

Before you shower every morning, get on the floor and do pushups. This probably only takes a minute of your time in the beginning. Gotta start somewhere, quit making excuses.

Forget the math books, just exercise, get that blood running to your brain. And megadoses of B vitamins could help.

> megadoses of B vitamins

Interesting. Never heard of this before.

Disclaimer: your pee will turn green.

I think successful people in STEM fields have a high risk of assuming they're competent in other unrelated fields. People shouldn't take medical advice from people on the internet, even if they say they are a doctor.

Medicine is horrifically complex. Most vitamins also have an absorption limit, meaning megadoses simply go through your urine or stool. Look at me, doing exactly as I say not to do and trying to pass off medical information on the internet. The point of what I'm saying is to be careful believing things in these threads.

Medicine seems to be mostly concerned with more tangible problems. Good luck going to your doctor and complaining of poor cognition as your only symptom. I've done this before and SSRIs were the only thing offered.

I didn't take SSRIs. I used nutrition / exercise / stress management that I learned all on the internet and it worked.

I think the correct approach is to verify every single piece of information, like how you just pointed out your parent comments megadosing is misleading advice.

I also don't believe blindly trusting your doctor is a good idea either. There seems to be a huge framentation on nutritional science concenus for example. Sometimes it's really hard to know what to believe when it comes to our biologys.

Exercise but forget math?? Why on earth not do both???

Consider being careful with this. Too much of anything can cause damage, regardless of being fat or water soluble. Certainly avoid any advice any study that did not include at least a few million people from every nation in a controlled scientific method.

You might find exercise changes those symptoms (brain fog, forgetting etc). It might reduce your serum cholesterol as well, though likely not by as much as the statins.

Start new hobbies you're interested in, socialize, and remain physically active. You cannot stop aging, but you can mitigate the effects a bit by remaining active.

I agree, I'm 48 and I feel keeping in physical shape is the most important thing to do. It's easy to become complacent after age 40 and to settle. My thyroid crapped out, even with meds it sucks, physical recovery is much harder even my skin is a concern due to the sun and lack of hair. Internally who knows, I could have arteries ready to slough off a chunk of goop that will kill me.

Even though exercise is important gyms feel alien with loud current pop music, ever-present perfume/cologne, intimidating healthy younger people seemingly at will, current slang words and gym fashion. Even the smells of hair products and cologne are alienating, in my heyday it was CK-be and CK One. The experience can be a strong deterrent to be so isolated generationally.

Certainly the only thing to do is to mitigate since you can't reverse aging. At least with your body there is a possibility if you don't have and age-related diseases. But it seems almost impossible to exercise your brain and if so how would you know it's getting better or maintaining?

>Even though exercise is important gyms feel alien with loud current pop music, ever-present perfume/cologne, intimidating healthy younger people seemingly at will, current slang words and gym fashion. Even the smells of hair products and cologne are alienating, in my heyday it was CK-be and CK One. The experience can be a strong deterrent to be so isolated generationally.

Sorry, but it's like you've made a list of several insignificant things, going out of your way to feel alien (40 something here myself).

You make it sound like gyms are some kind of German techno dungeon clubs...

Sorry, but you've responded to a surface detail, going out of your way to be unempathetic. Gyms can be alienating to anyone at any age. So can smells, music, etc.

Any number of small things can add up to make a person feel like an outsider, and prolonged feeling like an outsider can ruin previously enjoyable activities (and can have other more serious effects).

>Sorry, but you've responded to a surface detail

Well, sorry but the parent only mentioned surface details.

>Gyms can be alienating to anyone at any age. So can smells, music, etc.

That's a general statement, and it doesn't say much. So? One could always find another gym. Gym practice is even more difficult and alienating than bad playlists and too much cologne for most people -- maybe one should focus on that?

Besides, if we quit every time there was something remotely alienating, even more so if it was "smells" and "music", we wouldn't go very far. Sorry, but this is one of "oh, the humanity" kind of situations.

Think of it like a bug report: the user only knows how to describe the surface symptoms, but they indicate a deeper problem.

Yeah, it could point to a deeper issue.

But it might help to point that the surface manifestations of it are not really convincing as important -- because in most cases such issues are not some impossible to overcome medical/psychological issues, but just personal hangups if not excuses.

If I were you I'd look around at different gyms or physical activities until you find something you enjoy. There are tons of different options (to name a few: yoga, climbing, mountain biking, swimming, power lifting, running, that thing I sometimes see on TV where you competitively try to chop wood faster than other people, etc...). Try a bunch of stuff out and I bet you'll find something you enjoy going to more than the type of gym you described. Many also have mental aspects, while not a replacement for keeping yourself more generally cognitively engaged probably help with that to some degree as well

Weird about the gym. 200 pounds will always be 200 pounds. If the younger crowd bothers you that much try going at a different time. My gym is full of people of all ages, although time of day will dictate what age is there in force. The early morning crowd (7am or before) is almost always older people.

>But it seems almost impossible to exercise your brain and if so how would you know it's getting better or maintaining?

I've heard that some people practice solving puzzles for this.

The thing about statins is if you believe the hype, and don't believe the fear mongering they still barely work, according to the pharmaceutical funded studies. Just enough to claim its got a benefit but how big is this benefit?

The evidence on statins is so strong that DeBakey put himself on one when they first came out. He lived to 99 and was sharp to the end. More than a few have opined we should add one to water supply.

This isn't evidence, this is marketing and anecdotes.

Things like this make me ask ... would he have been sharper without them?

That’s what I run into with my doc. “You seem sharp to me”. Yeah, I’m a resonably smart guy, but could I be better if I skip these? Slowdown may not be apparent to others, but it is to me.

Not a doctor... observed some interesting side effects with my parents on these, and would personally err on the side of caution with them. If you do come off though, do it gradually - also there are different types, so it may be worth looking into that.

"would he have been sharper without them"

Probably not? It'd be pretty unusual for an already sharp person to become sharper at age 80.

Sharper at 80 with statins or without statins was the question, not sharper at 80 than at 70.

Since he kept working for another 19 years, including supervising heart surgery on Boris Yeltsin, he probably didn't suffer much of a decrease in sharpness on statins, if any.

oh for pete's sake, let me google it for you: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/...

Now, as for mental health, the FDA has added no warnings despite decades of use, and the mechanism of action strongly suggests statins would be protective if anything (by directly and significantly reducing vascular dementia). Here's a package insert from the FDA's website: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2012/02...

Also, I'm not raging statin advocate, the real answer is diet and exercise. The American lifestyle is a catastrophe.

Believe it or not, relying on other people to google your claims is not a good way to present evidence.

I can find confirmations and denials of literally any concept in the universe on google.

This is more a general rule when discussing medicine, not so much a denial of this specific drug.

True, evidence looks more like this:

Two well-done meta-analyses of statins for primary prevention showed no mortality benefit. After the exclusion of four trials with serious risks of bias, the relative risk of cardiovascular events associated with statins was 0.99 (95% confidence interval, 0.90 to 1.08).2,3

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1207079

Get your test levels checked. Many men have low testosterone as they get older. Memory and concentration are among the many things affected.

If you're low, it's easy to fix with TRT.

Even before you mentioned statins, I was starting to suspect you may be eating a lot of carbohydrates/sugary stuff or that you may have diabetes.

It could also be the statins which seem to be more harmful than helpful, but it may also be your diabetes or pre-diabetes, which I assume you have.

Either way, try a keto diet for a few months, and do some blood tests afterwards. See if your blood results improve (I believe they will) and then you can drop statins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlbdMb8oGDo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynpqxnxtLi8

I've been on a keto diet for nearly 2 years with only a handfull of cheat days. The rumored "mental clarity" never came. It seems to help greatly with migraine though (which is why I've been able to stick to it for so long ... I get a lot of migraines).

My cholesterol went up quite a bit while on it, but is still within the target range for the statin, so we haven't changed dose.

My doc is fine with me experimenting with the diet. I've lost quite a bit of weight doing it and it seems to be reducing the frequency of migraines. His only comment was if the cholesterol keeps going up he would recommend a higher dose of simvastatin.

> it may also be your diabetes or pre-diabetes, which I assume you have

That seems a bit presumptuous.

FWIW, consider the possibility that a foggy mind is the result of a sleep disorder (which may have other underlying causes). You can't learn or remember anything without sleep.

I know people who are using FitBit track their sleep. I've never used it; instead I got the sleep tracker that was mentioned in a recent blog post here:

https://www.amazon.com/Emfit-QS/dp/B0158W3E2A

They're not medical devices, but if you're mystified as to what's going on, it might help to figure out if problems correlate with poor sleep.

(I don't know anything about statins, but if you want another place to look...)

EDIT: I saw in your other comment that you're working 70 hour weeks -- personally that is the first thing I would address. You don't have enough time to pay attention to your health, which is false economy!

Are there such devices which do not require the cloud, i.e. data is analysed locally only?

Yeah good question. I'm wary of uploading my data to the cloud too, but I didn't heavily prioritize it, since my main goal is to fix/improve my sleep.

In addition to the Emfit, I use a pulse oximeter, and you can download all the data over USB. No cloud.

It's actually a medical device, which means the software is horrible. I'm running Windows inside a VirtualBox VM on my Mac to extract data and plots from it.

It has a finger sensor that you wear all night. It measures your heart rate and SpO2 (oxygen levels, roughly). That's it. The Emfit is nice because it also tells you when you get out of bed, measures REM sleep vs. light sleep, etc.

The pulse oximeter is useful for keeping track of sleep apnea, but I was suggesting a more general consumer device to get a picture of how you sleep first. (Most people probably don't want to wear something on their finger every single night if there's no symptoms.)

Sleep apnea is incredibly common. Snoring a big indicator for it. It means you aren't breathing properly at night, which means you can't sleep properly. Brain fog is a common symptom (although personally this isn't my issue). It ranges from minor/undiagnosed to severe/life-threatening, and it's chronic so it gets worse as you get older.

But I'm sure there are other sleep disorders that can cause brain fog.

So I actually use 2 different devices -- one cloud and one not -- and they give different information.

https://www.amazon.com/CONTEC-CMS50F-oximeter-monitor-softwa...

Thanks for the detailed response!

Apple watch, I think

Really? I assumed everything Apple goes straight to the cloud. Would be excellent if the data stayed on the watch or the phone.

If you leave icloud off, apple hwalth won’t leave your device. And I believe it only can leave the device with encryption encrypted by a local password that apple can’t decrypt.

I am not certain of the technical measuees safeguarding thus, mind you.

For tracking, I use autosleep. They say the data doesn’t leave the device. The data is done through apple health, so there might be a safeguard apple enforces which means it is not possible for the data to leave the device, but can be used by an app.

http://autosleep.tantsissa.com/privacy

This indicates that apple enforces a prohibition against health data export. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32622306/can-i-store-hea...

Was going to say the same thing. I'm 44 and feel like someone's blasting me with that Men In Black brain eraser once a day.

I also sleep like shit. 3-5 hrs for weeks on end.

I have about 3 hrs of work to do today. Normally I'd wait till everyone is in bed, work on it till 3am, then 'sleep in' till 7 so I could be ready for work.

Now I'm just doing it midday so i can go to bed at a normal time.

(Actually i'm procrastinating currently, another bad habit that i've developed by telling myself i can just do the work when everyone goes to bed).

I used to have very bad sleep. Now I take Calcium and Magnesium supplements and feel 10 years younger. It's a miracle. It could be as simple as a mineral deficiency.

I find adding my task to my Google Calendar works like crazy. It is a mind trick that keeps me accountable.

Also, I am big on the "5-minute rule". I promise to do at least 5 minutes of a task. Again, this works like crazy.

Yep. I'm mid 40s, have a newborn, and lack of sleep means my brain has gone to shits. Just trying to stay alive...

Doing regular physical exercise helps a bit, and so does playing challenging PC games instead of just passively vegging out on ${streamingProvider} for downtime (*if any).

Almost certainly the result of either not getting enough sleep or apnea, or some other sleep disorder. The fact that you take statins suggests a bad diet, which in turn suggests that you’re overweight. Past a certain point apnea is darn near guaranteed in overweight/obese people.

FWIW, https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/why_statins_dont_really_... makes a case for the skepticism. "We found highly skewed distribution of word frequencies for dementia, Parkinson's disease, and short term memory loss, with all of these occurring much more frequently in the statin reviews than in the comparison reviews."

I haven't tried to evaluate this case, it's just something I've filed away to look into if a doctor says I need statins.

“We gathered over 8400 on-line drug reviews prepared by patients on statin therapy, and compared them to an equivalent number of reviews for a broad spectrum of other drugs.”

That seems like a pretty sketchy analysis method, given all the FUD about statins that people are likely to read when they go online and search for information. I’m sure there are tons of people who, just like me, wonder “I’m experiencing XXX, could it be a med side effect?”. How many convince themselves that’s the case after reading things online and then go add their own voice to the signal?

That's fair -- I'd forgotten the context of the quote I picked out, as it's been years since I read this article.

Generally when it comes to a medication you're expected to take for years or the rest of your life, I'd want very strong evidence in its favor. The well-known problems and biases in biomedical research mean I need to consider a wider range of claims than the most official reviews, unfortunately.

I'd think the sort of things in statin reviews would have a lot to do with the health of people who tend to be taking statins. Obesity, lack of exercise, sleep apnea, etc. Along with age.

Similar age, and I experience this most when I'm depressed (which is mostly seasonal for me, winter is often very unproductive and very foggy for me, if I don't get myself to somewhere with some sun).

Getting my depression sorted usually sorts the fogginess and mental sluggishness. Though I'm confident I'm not as quick witted as I was in my 20s and 30s. I have a lot more knowledge and a bit more wisdom but I'm not as "smart" as 25 year old me; I'm nicer and more empathetic, though, so that counts for something.

When I'm not depressed learning new things is slower and a bit more labored but not hugely so. I've been getting back into serious music study after years of only casual playing and I think I'm learning new pieces and techniques at almost the same pace I did when I was younger, though I'm basing that assessment on recollection which can be hazy after ~20 years.

I think there's also a tendency to lose the growth mindset as you age. I struggle with it sometimes. When starting a new project where learning a bunch of new stuff is required, there's sort of a grumpiness about it...it's like, "I've already learned and done real work in a half dozen programming languages, why do I have to learn another one?" With a dash of "I'm too old to be wasting time on these detours into obscure territory. I'm already an expert in all this other stuff, I should be focused on maximizing the value of that expertise." Even though, honestly, learning new stuff is more fun than the actual building things and using existing expertise is often boring and predictable; but this mindset gets in the way, anyway. It's quite a pickle to be in.

I'd second other commenters in that you should get your sleep checked out. I had unchecked sleep apnea for about a year and wasn't able to learn or remember anything during that period. Sleep apnea is very subtle, some people go untreated for decades and are shocked to find they have it. I was 26 when I was diagnosed, lean, and otherwise in great shape—so, really, anyone could fall victim—it's worth looking into. Further reading: https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19532060/sleep-apnea-coul...

58 years old here, been into speed sports my entire life.. still am as a matter of fact. I still have stunning reation times, maybe it's genetic but I can do more pushups than my age of course I work out. And I don't consider myself old, I like hop hop, some rap. FWIW.

Isn't convincing yourself you're not old based on your music tastes the first thing old people do

Besides that, isn't hip hop like 40 years old? To put this into context to the HN audience, Unix is from around the same time.

You have to be a little more specific about artists. If you're a big Run DMC fan, you aren't going to convince anybody how hip you are to hip hop. And if you call it 'hop hop' you've got a 30 Rock moment : https://youtu.be/fiOMbqPHFwo?t=29s

Once upon a time, maybe, but somewhere in the 80s or 90s music seems to have matured and while a lot of details have changed since then, the core hasn't. Where the "pop music" is today hasn't changed much in a while. I could probably still freak out my 65 year old parents, but I'm not sure what my children could do at this point to freak me out. Listen to things I don't like, sure, that's not very hard, but freak me out? Not sure what that could be.

I was sitting in a cab the other day with the radio on, some pop song playing. To me it was an 80s drum beat with a 90s style ballad laid over the top.

I lived through the rise of Grunge, EDM, Rap, Hip Hop, etc. and recent music just seems to be mish-mashes of all existing styles rather than anything new.

It just feels like there's been no new style of music for 20 years. Last vaguely new style I remember hearing is dark cabaret.

Check out the early albums of Tycho and alt-J on Spotify with related artists.

Tycho is EDM and alt-j is indie rock.

Not sure why you think alt-j is a new genre, listen to metric, London Grammar, the XX, arcade fire, etc. from a decade ago.

It's just a slight variation on existing indie rock. It's good, but it's not a whole new genre.

It might not "freak you out" how would you feel if your kids told you their new favorite rapper is 6ix9ine.

https://youtu.be/gAs9HZC9c7Y

There is content I would happily ban, and not give a rats ass about what HN thinks about my ban (HN is not invited into my parenting relationship, for both obvious reasons and ones less obvious [1]), but it's not the "music" that would freak me out. Take that same text and set it to Beethoven's 5th, and it would be banned. Take different text and set it to the same "music" and it would not "freak me out". I'd very strongly dislike it, but that's not the same thing. (I think "freak out" involves some virtue signaling against the music, and some conflation of the morality of certain styles of music. I have a hard time believing in the "immorality" of a style of music. Content, no question, but not style.)

(I rather expect to "strongly dislike" what my oldest son ends up discovering and settling on as his favorite music. I expect he's going to discover "trance" one day and just adore it. To me it's almost the opposite of what I'm looking for in music. But other than insisting that I don't have to hear it, I've got no plans to cut it off for musical reasons. In fact... sigh... it's likely to be me who introduces it to him as something he may like.)

[1]: I will say having watched our culture evolve over the past ~30 years, I've come to a greater understanding of the importance of watching what you take in, and I try to feed things to my kids that aren't junk. There's a lot of analogy to the way we are currently collectively groping towards a realization that social media patterns aren't neutral. But what the HN gestalt labels junk and what I label junk are going to be very, very different things.

(And before someone jumps down my throat about even that, bear in mind that A: I'm not completely controlling everything; that doesn't scale because they need to learn to deal with this on their own and B: they have repeatedly told me that I do indeed bring the good stuff; I don't keep this policy a secret from them, and they aren't pushing back against it either, because I deliver.)

No, many people even as young as 35 tend to have tremendous nostalgia regarding the music of their youth, to the point that I who rarely exhibit any form of nostalgia often have trouble connecting with them. Regarding other things, yes people like to make themselves feel young by adopting styles and activities usually associated with younger people. But music is more rarely one of them, especially genres popularized after their twenties.

Younger than that, even. I'm 28 and a lot of people 25-30 (including me!) really love doing 90s music at karaoke and things like that.

While simultaneously getting the name of your music tastes wrong

Or maybe he's just more hip to the latest fads than you? /s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxDRKhrorHI

As is convincing yourself you're mature! I'm 8 but I think '90s music is better than today's music. Also I think classical music is cool.

What are speed sports?

Anything that requires quick reaction time (e.g. mountain biking) or pure speed (e.g. track) or both.

Street racing from my teens, then formula ford racing. Now more just precision driving and racing style bicycles on narrow, windy, downhill paved trails.

>hop hop

How do you do, fellow kids?

I had a hippity hop as a kid. Does that count as a speed sport?

I love hop hop too.

According to this NHK medical frontiers show [0][1], Japanese researchers demonstrate that doing daily basic math exercises and reading aloud is good for the brain. So I built a basic math exercise generator app [2].

[0] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/medicalfrontiers/20170... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-5urj2WKY [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brainmath

Vision therapy for presbyopia and myopia relies partly on neuroplasticity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16194580

For anyone interested in the topic I suggest reading Norman Doidge's books, like "The Brain That Changes Itself" . http://www.normandoidge.com/

Has anyone tried dual n back? Has it improved your cognitive function?

TIL HN audience has a wide range of age

What was your initial assumption?

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