11/26/2025
Study identifies four turning points between brain phases in a lifetime
NBC News (11/25, Bush) reports researchers say that for the first time they have “identified four distinct turning points between...phases in an average brain: at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83. During each epoch between those years, our brains show markedly different characteristics in brain architecture, they say.” The study results, “published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, suggest that human cognition does not simply increase with age until a peak, then decline. In fact, the phase from ages 9 to 32 is the only time in life when our neural networks are becoming increasingly efficient, according to the research.” They observed that “during the adulthood phase, from 32 to 66, the average person’s brain architecture essentially stabilizes without major changes, at a time when researchers think people are generally plateauing in intelligence and personality. And in the years after the last turning point – 83 and beyond – the brain becomes increasingly reliant on individual regions as connections between them begin to wither away.”
