It is fascinating to note that the changes occurred in the white matter portion of the brain. The general thought (challenged recently) is that only the gray/grey matter neurons 'mattered'. White matter was just conduction between the grey matter neurons (which had all the intelligence). The final quantity of these grey neurons was fixed shortly after birth and people kept losing them as they aged.
If it turns out the body can recruit white matter in learning then suddenly we have 10-50 times more cells (white matter/grey matter ratio) that can participate in intelligence. I suspect the way intelligence is organized would also differ between the white and grey regions. Not to mention how they interact with each other!. It calls into question a lot of the assumptions computational scientists make in coming up with the complexity of a simulated brain. We might be at the start of understanding how truly complex the brain is.
A good overview of this understudied portion of the brain is the the book "the other brain" by douglas fields.
The basic theory is that young brains soak up experience, while older brains consolidate it. So older brains can make bigger leaps of logic -- the old cliche about "wiser" old people actual does have a biological basis. I wonder if this new study is just another piece of the same phenomenon. (New memory is stored in a different part of the brain because the old plastic/learning-storage centers have already been optimized and compressed...)
> The basic theory is that young brains soak up experience, while older brains consolidate it.
It does have a certain logical appeal: The longer you live, the higher probability that experiences (whether singly or sequences) are a repeat of something in the past. The marginal value of experience is generally decreasing.
I view the aging process as a sort of exploration-then-exploitation reinforcement learning process. In youth we explore our world and in adulthood we fall into efficient routines and become more productive.
I really do wonder how challenging the task was that there was no difference between trained younger and older brains.
Or perhaps there was a difference between young and old trainees but that was not the focus of the research?
Pretty much learning anything substantial is much harder later in life and true mastery is impossible if you start after your teenage years.
Case in point: chess, where the only recent exception has been GM John Shaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_K._Shaw who started his improvement late (at the grand old age of 19) and even then he only got to low GM level.
If it turns out the body can recruit white matter in learning then suddenly we have 10-50 times more cells (white matter/grey matter ratio) that can participate in intelligence. I suspect the way intelligence is organized would also differ between the white and grey regions. Not to mention how they interact with each other!. It calls into question a lot of the assumptions computational scientists make in coming up with the complexity of a simulated brain. We might be at the start of understanding how truly complex the brain is.
A good overview of this understudied portion of the brain is the the book "the other brain" by douglas fields.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Other-Brain-Breakthroughs-Revoluti...