Remember a few (or five) years back when new research came out that upended the longstanding practice of calculating dogs’ ages at seven years for every one human year? Well, now they’ve done it for humans. Sort of. Last week neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge unveiled a study which maps out five stages across four major turning points of brain development that our species go through, and the corresponding ages for these stages is a bit different than what you might expect. We begin life with the “childhood brain” that lasts from birth to age nine. Next is the “adolescent brain” that extends through — wait for it — 32! Meaning our brains only start adulthood at 32?? Actually… this explains a lot. “Adult brain” stays with us for the longest of any brain stage, until 66 when we enter “early aging brain” and finally cross into the last stage of “late aging brain” at 83. I feel I’ve aged just reading the results of this study.
“The brain rewires across the lifespan. It’s always strengthening and weakening connections and it’s not one steady pattern — there are fluctuations and phases of brain rewiring,” lead researcher Dr. Alexa Mousley, told the BBC, adding that this can happen at different ages for different people.
Mousley’s study published in Nature Communications, reveals that the first phase of the brain — called the “childhood brain” — lasts until the age of 9. During this time, human brains are defined by “network consolidation,” where synapses are whittled down and rewired.
After the age of 9, the brain enters the adolescence phase, which lasts until the early 30’s. During this time, “white matter” continues to grow in volume in the brain, and “organization of the brain’s communications networks is increasingly refined,” according to the study.
This is also the time when the brain undergoes one of its biggest changes within a person’s lifespan.
“Around the age of 32, we see the most directional changes in wiring and the largest overall shift in trajectory, compared to all the other turning points,” Mousley added, per the release.
“While puberty offers a clear start, the end of adolescence is much harder to pin down scientifically,” she added. “Based purely on neural architecture, we found that adolescent-like changes in brain structure end around the early thirties.”
After the age of 32, a person’s brain enters its adulthood era, which is the “longest era” of the brain. During this phase, the brain’s architecture stabilizes, leading to a period without “major turning points” in cognitive abilities or personality traits.
This lasts until the age of 66, when the human brain enters the early aging period. During this time, there is a “gradual reorganization of brain networks” with “reduced connectivity as white matter starts to degenerate,” according to Mousley.
“This is an age when people face increased risk for a variety of health conditions that can affect the brain, such as hypertension,” she added.
The final turning point of the brain happens at the age of 83, when a person enters the late aging brain phase. While the research noted that “data is limited for this era,” they said that in this final period, “brain connectivity declines even further, with increased reliance on certain regions.”
“After the age of 32, a person’s brain enters its adulthood era … a period without ‘major turning points’ in cognitive abilities or personality traits.” Oh no. No no no no no. I must insist on being an outlier to these findings. I do NOT want my 30s brain to be the one I spend the most time with in this life!! This has not been the best version of Kismet, she could definitely do with some cognitive (and personality) improvements. I guess this is also hitting a nerve (neuro pun!) because I am staring a birthday square in the eye this week where I will be marching further upwards of 32 and I’m not all that happy about it and see! don’t my ramblings sound like the whiny lamentations of a teenager still stuck in adolescence?! To be clear, I’m not knocking this study (pro-science here!), I’m just having a mini aging meltdown. Actually, the idea of not starting adulthood until 32 resonates a lot; it reminds me of something my father said to me several years ago, that I was living my life out of order. I was a very precocious, very winning kid. My adulthood — or what we thought was adulthood — has felt much more muddled. Turns out my brain has been on track all along, and that’s kind of comforting. I just need some leeway so it’s not a hard 32 for the switchover.
Photos credit: Oladimeji Ajegbile, Polina Zimmerman, RDNE Stock Project on Pexels
This makes a lot of sense. Even though I had a job, an apartment and adult responsibilities well before 32, I truly started to understand the world around me around 32. I started having my own agency and was able to take full responsibility for my life.
32 was definitely the age I stopped partying and got serious about my career
Same here @ NORMADES. 32 was when I met my (now wife) We prioritised working and saving and swapped clubbing for suppers at friends homes. We started meal planning, home cooking, eating and exercising properly. And actively started planning goals we hoped to achieve (personally & professionally) by 35 and before 40. We established chores, boundaries, routines and to-do / productivity lists and prioritised a good night’s sleep over binge-watching till 2am. Adult stuff you know 😊🩷😂
@ Kismet From 1 December baby to another, I hope you have a fantastic birthday (week?) may your special day be filled with love, laughter, good people, good food and all the things that bring you joy 🎀
Aw thank you, and to you as well!!
And your comments reminded me that I did start budgeting and saving money in my 30s, so at least I did that bit of adulting.🙃
I used to tell my students ” your 30s really start at 33″ and i feel this vindicates that.
I have always been serious about my career and my relationships but 33 is really when I took on all the responsibilities of being an adult – looking after family, budgeting, being tired all the time, communicating what I needed and breaking out of bad relationships. All that fun stuff.
This explains my entire 20s.
I must be an old soul, resting and being serious about work was already a part of me in my late 20s.
But if they say I was still developing white matter, so be it…
I can already guess how these findings will be used by people pretending to be concerned about younger women when the real issue is a lack of respect. First people started pretending there was no cognitive or emotional difference between a 12-year-old girl and a 24-year old woman, now people are going to start doing the same thing with 31-year-old women. Oh well. Grown women will continue to do what they want to do anyway.
This is dangerous nonsense. There are also brain scientists despairing because they believe what these scientists are calling the “adolescent” brain, should be called the young adult brain. If you look historically, enormous creative achievements were had by people under 25 who were out living independent lives, but today we trap young people in long educational careers before they start their “real” lives. These scientists see the adolescenting of twenty somethings to be more about modern over-parenting trends and a society that isn’t willing to offer real and meaningful work to young people.
Extending adolescence to 25 has been a disaster, going past that to 32 will be even worse. It’s a reason for trapping young people in unpaid internships and pay them low wages when they do get jobs. It’s taken away the period of being able to live independently and pursue all sorts of different experiences to maximize brain growth during young adulthood. Treating people in their late teens and early 20s as adolescents instead of young adults harms them and society.
Sorry. This is something I’ve watched happen over the course of my life and I feel strongly about it. I’ve worked in faculty support at R1 universities, including people doing cognition work. It’s not so much what these scientists have found, but the social meaning that’s assigned to it.
100% agree. I also work at an R1 university (I’m a research program officer) and fully understand the complexities of research and publishing results. Broad generalizations of research studies for public consumption can have severe consequences (see the nonsense happening in the U.S. public health sphere). I get the need to garner interest in these sorts of studies to aid in future funding, but this type of reporting can be dangerous.
Interesting, thank you both!
Interesting. I really had my stuff together in my 20s. Goal oriented, focused, motivated. I was so lost, anxious and depressed in my 30s. I guess I had a rough transition into adult brain. At 43 I finally feel more at peace with myself. Definitely feels like an even keel now.
I’ve always been a late bloomer, so while I think my adult brain started at 32, it didn’t fully turn on until 42.
Same. I didn’t feel like a true grown up until I hit 40. I am 45 now…and I still wonder lol.
Ah! I became a first time mother at 32. I did not want to take care of a child before! I felt to young.
I had my daughter when I was 22. I became a single parent when she was a toddler. Whatever the state of my brain, I had to be an approximation of an adult. I’m not sure what we are meant to do with this information.
Many of us had no choice but to be adults in our early 20s, not having rich parents or any way to support ourselves or get through college. I enjoyed making my own money and having my own life and, later, taking care of my baby. Of course I could’ve used more help, but the brain was fine.
Meh, I wanna dive deeper into that study because I absolutely do not trust the age generalization, given the lack of difference or significance in what certain bodies experience in adulthood. Being that I’m going through perimenopause, I KNOW that my hormones are causing a ton of disruption cognitively. You can’t tell me that 32-66 is a solid adult phase with no personality changes. HA!
Seriously. Whose brains were they looking at? How many brains did they look at? What were the educational levels of the individuals in their study? Did that matter? Male or female or other? Age they first became a parent? Did they become a parent? Have they served in combat? At what age? I really want to know the variables they entertained & those they didn’t.
Also, ugh, ‘data is’? That alone would make me look askance at their results. ‘Data’ is plural! Data are!!
The brain may change at 32, but I hope this won’t be used by people to infantilize what we expect of ourselves! I had 2 alcoholic parents and became competent at all sorts of things as a child. I made my own 3 children do real household chores, and get part time jobs at 15 or 16. I never forgot a WW2 Resistance fighter saying she suspected her son was also working in the Resistance, but she felt that at age 15, he was old enough to decide for himself what to do!! I HATE how people say “He’s just a kid!” to explain poor behavior, and I hate even more when parents raise children who are dependent and helpless because they haven’t been taught life skills.
At 32 I had 3 kids, worked full time getting my college degree, etc but looking back now I can definitely say my brain was still going through changes. It has less to do with responsibility and achievement.
Sounds about right! Actually I think full experienced adulthood brain is even later. Seriously at 55 looking back at 32 I was still forming neurologically.
Oh, dear. Looks like I’m in my early aging brain period and I never got around to budgeting…. 🤷♀️ 😉
Is this another study that is being widely misinterpreted? Like the whole your brain isn’t fully developed until 25; when in fact that study was speaking of a very specific part of the brain in some people.
Also brain development changes a lot from age 9-32 so it’s sad that people will run with this and be like look when the study is simply talking about brain development and not saying that adulthood doesn’t begin until age 32. Is also be curious to see who the 3300 individuals used in the study were from and if they encompassed people from all over the world with different experiences, etc.
Oh please, don’t give overbearing clingy parents and ridiculous men ideas. Of course they’ll take that to mean that women are some how less able to adult than they are, when we adult better than they do.
Male or female brain….which did they study? It doesn’t say both male and female, it says ‘person’ throughout.
My 30s (new mum, widowed before kid was 2, working full time for a great company in a job I loved) was both my favourite decade and my hardest. Looking back from my 7th decade, I wonder how the pluck I did it all!!