It’s never too late to start over

Agustín Ibáñez, director of the Institute of Cognitive and Translational Neuroscience (Ineco / Conicet / Fundación Favaloro), explains: «Some studies show poor performance in 40% of adults between 60 and 70 years old. We also know that some processes (semantic processing, implicit memory, emotional self-regulation) can keep improving in old age, and that brain plastic changes occur throughout life. In this sense, the best explanation [of the preservation of cognitive abilities] is provided by the so-called Theory of Aging and Cognition (a cognitive theory of scaffolding in old age). This hypothesis proposes that cerebral and mental activity produces compensatory scaffolds in the face of neurocognitive decline. Scaffolding in old age can lead to brain changes through the reinforcement of cerebral connections or the compensation of deficient structures. In particular, it was observed that frontal activity (activation and connectivity) increases with age and that such an increase is often associated with preserved or improved cognitive performance.