The Disconnected Mind is a research project that aims to discover how our thinking skills change with age, and what we can do to protect our cognitive health in later life. The project is funded by Age UK. Losing our thinking skills is one of the greatest fears about ageing. We don’t know why it happens to some of us but not others. The Disconnected Mind project aims to find out. Ultimately, that knowledge will help us to protect our cognitive health as we get older.
In June 1947, over 70,000 school children aged 11 in Scotland took an intelligence test as part of the Scottish Mental Survey. The test measured their cognitive abilities in a consistent and replicable way. Half a century later, Professor Ian Deary and a colleague re-discovered the results, sparking The Disconnected Mind project. Today, many of the ‘children’ who took the test in 1947 are at the heart of the research. Now adults in their 70s, over 1,000 joined the project at its start in 2004.
