People often blame memory lapses on age, but that excuse might not cut it anymore.

A recent study shows that older folks can give the young a run for their money when it comes to remembering things. In the study, researchers showed test subjects a screen filled with numbers and letters — but also distracting dots zipping around the screen.

The subjects were tasked with remembering which numbers and letters they saw, despite the decoy dots. And the results were clear: People in their 60s and 70s did almost as well as people in their 20s, when it came to remembering. There was one difference in the test subjects, though: Younger folks tended to be much better at filtering out all those zipping dots than those in their 60s and 70s.

In some ways, you can think of older brains like a well-built house. As the years go by, the beams stay strong, and the foundation remains. But it also tends to grow a layer of clutter — which some might prefer to call character.