As you get older, learning often feels harder than it used to.Why is that?What changes in the brain as we age that makes acquire new information harder? Is there anything we can do to avoid our minds slowing down?

随着年龄增长，常常会觉得学习变得比过去更难了。为什么会这样?大脑随年龄发生了哪些变化，导致获取新信息变得困难了?我们能做些什么来避免思维的衰退吗?

This is a topic I’ve been asked about a lot, but until recently one that I didn’t know much about.Aging wasn’t a topic I spent much time researching in my book Ultralearning, preferring to focus on principles of learning that are universal.
这是我经常被问到的一个问题，但直到不久前，我对此都了解不多。 衰老不是我在《超速学习》书中花大量时间研究的主题，我更关注通用的学习原则。

Recently, however, I decided to dig into some of the research on cognitive aging to see how our learning is impacted by getting older.
不过，最近我决定深入了解一些关于认知老化的研究，看看我们的学习能力是如何受年龄增长的影响的。

Learning slows with age
学习随年龄增长而变慢

The first clear finding is that the feeling that one is getting slower mentally as we age is not an illusion-countless studies reinforce the fact that most aspects of mental processing get worse as we age:
第一个明确的发现是，人们觉得随着年龄增长，思维会变慢，这并不是幻觉–无数研究都强调了这一事实，即认知加工的大部分方面都会随衰老而减退。

Interestingly, not all aspects of thinking get worse with age.Accumulated knowledge of the world increases until nearly the end of our lives, as you can see int the figure above with vocabulary size.
有趣的是，并非思维的所有方面都会随年龄增长而变差。直到生命的最后，我们累积的关于世界的知识都在增长，如上图中词汇量大小所示。

This is a trade-off between what researchers call fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.Even if our minds slow down as we get older, we accumulate more experience.We know more as we age, even if we’re slower at learning and processing new information. Wisdom increases even as wit declines.
这是研究人员所称的流体智力与晶体智力之间的此消彼长。尽管我们的思维随着年龄增长变缓了，但我们也随时间积累了更多的经验。尽管我们学习和加工新信息的速度变慢了，但我们也随时间流逝知道得更多。智力减退，但智慧却增加了。

What gets worse with age?
随年龄增长什么变差了?

There are different hypotheses about how our minds tend to get worse as we get older.A simple one is the idea that processing speed slows down as we age neurons lose mylenation and so the signals that carry the currents of our thinking slow down.
关于我们的思维随年龄增长如何退化，有不同的假设。一个简单的假设认为，随着我们变老，信息加工的速度变慢了。神经元的髓鞘形成减少导致携带思维电波的信号传输速度减慢。

Other researchers disagree, arguing that aging impacts some brain areas more severely than others, resulting in specific deficits of cognition rather than an overall decline.
另一些研究人员持不同意见，认为衰老对某些大脑区域的影响比另一些更严重，结果是特定的认知能力减弱，而不是整体的退化。

The frontal aging hypothesis argues that the frontal cortex is hit harder by aging.The frontal cortex is involved in many functions, but a key one is in asserting top-down executive control over our actions.This is often associated with the deliberate effort it takes to override habits or consciously keep intenttionss in mind when completing tasks.
额叶衰老假设认为，额皮质受衰老影响更大。很多认知功能都涉及额皮质，但一个关键功能是对我们的行为进行自上而下的控制。这通常可见于有意识地克服习惯，或在完成任务时有意识地在心里想着任务的目的。

Researchers Todd Braver and Robert West argue for a goal maintenance account of cognitive aging.Following the frontal aging hypothesis, this suggests that what is harder to do as you get older is to maintain and wwitch the goals associated with a task.This results in older individuals struggling more with Stroop tasks, where an automatic habit needs to be overridden by instructions:
研究人员托德·布拉维尔(Todd Braver)和罗伯特韦斯特(Robert west)主张从目标记忆的角度解释认知衰老。按照额叶衰老假设，这意味着随年龄增长，困难的是记住和切换与一项任务相关的目标。因此年长的人在完成斯特鲁普式任务时遇到更多困难，因为需要遵照指令克服下意识的习惯，

Additionally, older individuals are hurt more by multitasking than younger people.This seems to be because multitasking requires switching the goals of the task at hand over a shourt period of time.Since older people have a harder time maintaining these, switching tasks frequently is particularly hard.
除此以外，在多任务处理上，年老的人也比年轻的人表现更差。这或许是因为多任务处理需要在短时间里切换手上执行任务的目标。由于年长的人更难记住目标，频繁切换任务对他们尤其困难，

Another deficit observed in older individuals is difficulty with binding information that occurs in a combined context.Chunking is one of the most important parts of learning new information, so the fact that this becomes harder with age may explain why learning new thins feels more difficult as we get older.
在老年人身上观察到的另一衰退，是难以将关联情境中的信息组合起来。组块是学习新知识时最重要的一环，因此它随年龄增长变得困难，也就解释了为什么随着我们老去，学习新东西会感到困难。

Difficulty binding information together to store in long-term memories also impacts our ablility to remember our life events.Simple information is less impacted by aging, but as we get older we may start to forget the context in which something was learned .The person you walk by looks familiar, but you forget where you met hime before.
难以将信息关联到一起，存储在长期记忆中，也影响了我们记住生活中发生事情的能力。简单的信息不太受衰老的影响，但随着我们年龄增加，可能会开始忘记得知某件事的具体情境。路过的那个人看着眼熟，却想不起来你之前是在哪里见到他的。

The story isn’t all gloomy.In addition to crystallized knowledge, older people seem to be better at emotional regulation as well.Since managing emotions is an important part of success at many tasks, this suggests older people may be slower but surer at working on goals that have a bit of frustration baked in .
事情也不全然那么糟糕。 除了晶体智力外，老年人似乎也更擅长情绪管理。鉴于情绪管控是做成许多事情的重要方面，这表明年龄大的人在面对可能遇到挫折的目标时，或许进展缓慢，但步伐坚定。