Cognition, being essential to human actions as if generally partakes the mental abilities that are part of all human activities. Simple daily activities and tasks has to do with how a person understands the world and acts in it. The concept of cognition therefore has more to do with the mechanism of how we learn, pay attention, remember and solve problems.
Supported by neuronal networks, it is solely a brain function. There are various brain functions involved when talking about cognition and these skills sum up human activities.
PERECEPTION
The recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli by the brain is a cognitive ability known as perception. These sensory stimuli include smell, touch, sight, hearing.
ATTENTION
Another cognitive ability. This is the ability to maintain concentration on an action, thought or even object.
MEMORY
This is storage of information. It may be long term or short term and is of all a very crucial cognitive ability.
LANGUAGE
Translation of sounds into words to generate verbal output.
MOTOR SKILLS
This is the ability to manipulate objects and mobilize our bodies and muscles.
The importance of these cognitive abilities are easily detectable considering we carry out all these in our every day activities. conceptually without it, we might as well be non existent.
Hundreds of cognitive tasks are performed by humans everyday with very little recognition of the effort put into it. Noticing colors, remembering names, or calculating time are basic cognitive activities.
RESEARCH HAS PROVEN THAT THE MOST ACTIVE AREAS OF THE BRAIN VARY ACCORDING TO THE TASK BEING PERFORMED.
Aging comes with a lot of decline in cognitive activities. Movements and reflexes slow down, hearing and vision weakens, memory span shortens, speech deteriorates and a lot more. Differences between the young and old can therefore be shown using cognitive abilities, aside from the very obvious and unstated facts.
COGNITIVE CHANGES WITH AGING.
Age hinders attention, particularly multi-tasking. for example, difficulty in paying attention to multiple traffic lanes while driving. Processing information rapidly is therefore a very active cognition in youths. Similarly, the ability to keep information in mind.
This task requires a working memory and this declines as age increases. The ability to recall information stored peaks early and gradually becomes more challenging after age 40.
Visual perceptual abilities and the ability to understand spatial relationships also show decline with age. And as noted the rapid childhood development of language skills as shown in kids ability to speak fluently based on the environments and social conditions surrounding their upbringing.Recalling names is often a problem noted with the aged. Even though this information very well exists in a persons knowledge, the problem lies effectively in accessing the word. Sometimes it manifests as a "tip of the tongue" experience____ you may feel so close to recalling a word but just can't. Most times you know the given letter that begins the word and if someone else says it, you easily recognize it.
This decline affects live activities and is usually not inevitable. It is usually slight and does not necessarily mean the start of dementia but advanced more complicated memory and cognitive loss shown with brain atrophy may be a cause for alarm as the most important thing to note about brain aging is that it is different in individuals. Minimal in some and in others severe.
AS THIS IS JUST A RECENT TOPIC IN MY LISTS OF INTERESTS THERE WOULD FOLLOW UP'S ON WHAT SEVERE BRAIN AGING AND LOSS OF COGNITION IS ALL ABOUT.