Exponential growth combined with exponential decline explains lifetime performance evolution in individual and human species.

ABSTRACT: The physiological parameters characterizing human capacities (the ability to move, reproduce or perform tasks) evolve with ageing: performance is limited at birth, increases to a maximum and then decreases back to zero at the day of death. Physical and intellectual skills follow such a pattern. Here, we investigate the development of sport and chess performances during the lifetime at two different scales: the individual athletes' careers and the world record by age class in 25 Olympic sports events and in grandmaster chess players. For all data sets, a biphasic development of growth and decline is described by a simple model that accounts for 91.7% of the variance at the individual level and 98.5% of the variance at the species one. The age of performance peak is computed at 26.1 years ol

SUBMITTER: Berthelot G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3682058 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature