How old is your brain?

In June, this column challenged readers to take an online cognition and memory test that purports to tell us how quick and nimble our brains are—and how well we remember things.

The braniac exam was modified from actual test batteries used to help determine the success or failure of new drugs being developed to treat neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease.

The tests—which readers are still welcome to take!—provide a score indicating how old a person’s brain is based on their performance. It also tells test-takers how they compare with tens of thousands of people between the ages of 18 and 80 who have taken the test.

Comments about the test were lively. People who scored below their real age smugly reported how much they likes the test, while those who scored older than their biological age on the test—some by decades—were convinced the test was rigged, trivial, or not for real.

Scientists at Cognitive Drug Research, the company that runs the tests, explained to the disgruntled that some scores might have been affected either by people being distracted, or by computers, wireless units, and servers that might have been sluggish and effected scores requiring speedy responses.

Recently, Cognitive Drug Research, which is based in Goring-on-Thames, England, sent me results for the nearly 14,000 people who took the Portfolio.com test.

Out of 13,836 tests taken, men outnumbered women by almost two to one; that reflects either the website's reading demographic, or a greater paranoia among men about how smart they are.

Regardless, the statistics show that men were faster in their response times, by 9 microseconds on average. Reaction time when choices needed to be made were 443 msec for men and 452 msec for women.

The median age of everyone taking the test was 35.7 years, with a range up to someone who claimed to be 103 years old. (The test only scores brain age up to 80 years old).

People who said they were 18 to 25 years old were 64 msec faster than those between the ages of 60 and 70. That may reflect the time they've spent on computers playing video games.

Below is a graph that tells test-takers how they fit in with the 14,000 people who took the test. I took the test once and got lucky, coming out with the brain of a 25 year old—half my real age. I haven’t taken the test again for fear of coming our much older.

My editor took the test several times, and came out older than his true years, then younger—a swing that may have had to do with how old he felt after editing my columns.

In the table below, 25.3 percent of 50 year olds had a "brain age" in the 20s. At the same time, 6.4 percent of 20 year olds had a "brain age" in the 50s. Check below to see how you did.

	Test-Takers' Actual Age
Their    Brain    Age	20	30	40	50	60	70
20	60.8%	52.7%	41.2%	25.3%	27.5%	11.1%
30	7.3%	9.9%	11.8%	8.6%	3.4%	3.7%
40	7.3%	6.5%	6.7%	14.2%	9.4%	9.4%
50	6.4%	8.2%	9.7%	12.6%	9.4%	7.4%
60	5.2%	6.8%	4.6%	6.5%	7.7%	7.4%
70	3.5%	4.1%	6.7%	11.1%	11.2%	7.4%
80	9.3%	11.6%	19.0%	21.3%	31.0%	55.5%