Life With Type 2: Our Hard Drives Are Full

[Northerner]

Life as an older type 2 isn't always about diabetes. There are also the traditional problems that come with getting up in years: "Did you sleep OK, Dearie?" "Doesn't that sun feel good on the joints?" "I've really started to like salsa lately. Must be my taste buds seeing if they can still be shocked."


So it came as a great consolation a few days ago when I read a news item that said it's a mistake to think that the brain slows down as people age because it's losing its power. The truth, according to a German research team, is that people's brains are somewhat like a computer's hard drive: The more information that's been stored on it, the longer it takes to find it. It isn't a problem of ability or intelligence; it's a problem of retrieval.

http://diabeteshealth.com/read/2014/04/26/8221/life-with-type-2-our-hard-drives-are-full/

 

[Vicsetter]

Pity we don't have the article because I don't believe it's true, for a start computer hard drives do not slow down as they fill up, thats a myth from tape drive days. The hard drive has a lookup table which tells the computer the physical location of the data ( a bit like the index in a library).

I would suspect that most people once they retire (and thus become old) stop the mental exercise that they had when they were working and their brains no longer work as well as they used to.

It also assumes that we know how the brain works (which we don't) and assumes that the recall of information is done in a linear fashion, which would explain why it takes longer, this is highly unlikely.

But what do I know, I'm already old.🙄