PNAS: At 35, it may really be the pinnacle of cognitive ability in our lives.

Over the past two years, news of mass layoffs at large Internet companies has been revealed, with development jobs in the hardest hit areas and the vast majority of developers being laid off are programmers over the age of 35.
for many people, 35 is a bump.
why programmers are not very popular after the age of 35, and there are many answers.
fact, a very real problem is that young people who were once in high style may not be able to "work" as much as the new generation after the age of 35.
Recently, researchers and their collaborators from the University of Munich analyzed data from 24,000 professional games played by 4,294 professional chess players from 1890 to 2014 and found that cognitive function in the human brain peaks at age 35, then declines all the way down, and begins to decline significantly faster after age 45.
not only that, but the researchers also found that human cognitive abilities are increasing, for example, for those born in the 1870s, those born in the 1970s were about 8 percent more cognitively capable.
research paper, entitled "Life cycle patterns of cognitive performance over the long run," was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on October 19.
it is well known that human cognitive abilities increase over time in the early stages of life and gradually weaken in the later stages of life.
, when exactly does the cognitive function of the human brain begin to decline? For the past century, this problem has plagued neuroscience scholars, because objective and dynamic assessment of human cognitive ability is a very difficult thing, so there has been less research on the relationship between human cognitive performance and age, and the evidence is very limited.
To objectively and dynamically assess the relationship between human cognitive ability and age, researchers used data from more than 24,000 chess matches over a 125-year period from 1890 to 2014, and 1.6 million chess data from 4,294 participants, to compare chess player movements with professional chess computer movements.
why chess was chosen, the researchers said, "In our empirical model, we rely on data from professional chess because this is typical evidence of human mental activity."
same time, we have all the data in our database for the World Chess Championships for nearly 125 years, and if we compare a person's actions with 20 currently powerful computers, we can get a very objective cognitive score.
to assess a player's cognitive abilities, the researchers selected only the actions between steps 10 and 100 in each game to exclude the player's influence on the game's score.
, the researchers also excluded 3,422 players who played fewer than five games.
found that cognitive abilities in the human life cycle showed hump-shaped changes.
growth between the ages of 0 and 20, slow growth between the ages of 20 and 35, slow decline between 35 and 45, and rapid decline after the age of 45.
, the researchers also found that for later-born chess players, their cognitive performance was significantly higher than that of chess players born in 1870.
For example, in the 1870s, chess players' movements matched computer movements by about 44%, while in the 1960s, chess players' movements matched computer movements by 50%, and by the 1990s, chess players' movements matched computer movements by more than 55%.
, by the end of the 20th century, chess players' cognitive abilities seemed to be developing faster and faster.
, the researchers say, "Why have people's cognitive levels increased significantly in recent years?" This may be related to the access to software of various chess training institutions in recent years, our growth environment is closely related to the development of cognitive ability, and the development of science and technology also affects the development of our cognitive level.
therefore, this model does not represent the future.
: "Our results do not question the value of experience, but the opposite is true," the researchers said.
we know that with the ad emerging of computers and chess programs, the preparation and practice of chess has changed dramatically.
, our data show that the conditions in which people are growing, including the rapid development of digital technology, can affect their cognitive development.
, based on the analysis and evaluation of the long-term cognitive abilities of a large number of chess players, the researchers established a trend model of human cognitive abilities with age.
over time, the cognitive abilities of the human life cycle change in a hump.
, and human cognitive abilities have increased over time over the past 125 years.
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