Sep 1, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
What many of us fear, especially as we hit our forties and fifties, is not being as quick of mind. Not remembering as well as we used to. By our 60s and 70s we worry there's nothing we can do and that…
Greg DobbsHostSo one of the reasons why people use 20-year-olds as a comparison is that's when what's called your fluid intelligence is at its height.
And that's the ability to solve problems, come up with solutions, agile thinking.
abilities in fluid intelligence tend to kind of consolidate around that age and then essentially intelligence that's around knowledge it starts to in fact improve after that so you it's called crystallized intelligence really fluid intelligence is mainly important if you're a maths genius And you're going to come up with complex, really the best math solutions you're going to do.
Research tends to have been focused on children, adolescents, young people, and then the elderly.
So as fluid intelligence tends to lose its best effect, what take over is what's called crystallized intelligence.
Now, what happens in your brain? And this, if you like, is new to people reading the book.
Let's say you're trained to be a doctor and a patient comes in through the door, come up with a set of symptoms, and you've been trained to recognize those symptoms.
In your 20s, late 30s, you're probably just using a little part of the brain on the left side of your brain.
Come back 10 or 15 years later, You're doing that job just as well, maybe even better.
You've got this scaffolding and new neural networks that have spread to the other side of the brain.
Come back 15, 20 years later, it's not just the other side of the brain, it's moved to the front of the brain as well.
So one of the reasons why people use 20-year-olds as a comparison is that's when what's called your fluid intelligence is at its height.
And that's the ability to solve problems, come up with solutions, agile thinking.
abilities in fluid intelligence tend to kind of consolidate around that age and then essentially intelligence that's around knowledge it starts to in fact improve after that so you it's called crystallized intelligence really fluid intelligence is mainly important if you're a maths genius And you're going to come up with complex, really the best math solutions you're going to do.
Research tends to have been focused on children, adolescents, young people, and then the elderly.
So as fluid intelligence tends to lose its best effect, what take over is what's called crystallized intelligence.
Now, what happens in your brain? And this, if you like, is new to people reading the book.
Let's say you're trained to be a doctor and a patient comes in through the door, come up with a set of symptoms, and you've been trained to recognize those symptoms.
In your 20s, late 30s, you're probably just using a little part of the brain on the left side of your brain.
Come back 10 or 15 years later, You're doing that job just as well, maybe even better.
You've got this scaffolding and new neural networks that have spread to the other side of the brain.
Come back 15, 20 years later, it's not just the other side of the brain, it's moved to the front of the brain as well.
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