NBC San Diego: When you hear the world "elderly" what age comes to mind? If your answer was 90, you definitely don't want to hear about this new study.

"Old age begins at 27" the headline reads. And no, that isn't a typo.

Those senior moments we've heard about actually start happening shortly after the brain's abilities peak at 22, according to researchers at the University of Virginia.

The study was recently published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging. (We'd love to link to the full research, but the journal charges for its articles.)

Two thousand men and women between the ages of 18 and 60 were studied over seven years, and researchers found top performance in the puzzles and other problems the participants were asked to solve occurred in those at 22 years old.

The first age at which scores for things like reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualization started to drop, was 27 according to the Daily Mail.

Memory dropped around 37. (For those of you over 37, you're reading an article about when old age begins, just in case you've already forgotten.)

So what can we look forward to? An increase in vocabulary reportedly appears around 60. Well at least that's somethin'.

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