The inevitable fate of the human brain is to deteriorate over time, hence the “pandemic” of dementia we are experiencing with increasing intensity, thanks to an ever-aging global population. Right? Right for most people perhaps, but completely wrong when it comes to a fairly exclusive “club” of individuals who maintain a young and vigorous brain well into old age. They are called superagers, and that name is no accident: these are people who, at 65, have the brain of a 20-year-old, and who, even past the age of 80, retain cognitive clarity equivalent to that of someone more than 30 years their junior.
They have… super memory, super resilience against Alzheimer’s disease, and studying them in recent years is offering scientists — as well as the rest of us ordinary mortals — a super opportunity to find strategies for maintaining an indomitable brain in defiance of the ravages of time.
A growing body of research is shedding light on the unique brains of superagers. For example, a very recent study from the University of Illinois, published in Nature, showed that superagers, unlike their peers, are capable of generating new neurons in the hippocampus — the brain’s key memory center — even at age 80, something that had long been considered impossible.
We are decoding the latest findings on this… ageless topic today with the help of Alexandra Touroutoglou, Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of Neuroimaging at the Frontotemporal Dementia Unit of Massachusetts General Hospital — a Greek scientist who is among the world’s leading experts in this field and has been peering inside the brains of superagers for a decade.
The Incredible Scores on Memory Tests
Let’s start with the basics. How is a superager defined? As Dr. Touroutoglou explains: “It is a person over the age of 65 who nonetheless retains a brain with youthful characteristics and thus shows no memory decline. To be precise, their brain’s performance is equivalent to that of a 20-year-old. For example, when we administer a memory test with a list of 16 unrelated words and ask participants to recall those words 30 minutes later, the average 50-year-old remembers nine words, the average 80-year-old remembers five words — while a superager remembers all of the words, just as a 20-year-old would!“
A superager’s mind may work like clockwork, yet at the same time — and this is astonishing — it may show all the physical signs of age-related deterioration. “Characteristically, it has been discovered, both by our research team and by others, that the brains of some superagers contain deposits of beta-amyloid plaques and tau protein aggregates — both of which play a significant role in Alzheimer’s disease. Yet none of the superagers show any symptoms of Alzheimer’s. What does this mean in practice? That these individuals may display the typical pathological markers of the neurodegenerative disease in their brains, yet not suffer from it. At the same time, studies show that superagers are physically likely to have all the same medical conditions as their peers. In short, they age like everyone else — but they are immune to Alzheimer’s disease,“ the Greek Harvard professor clarifies.
The “Cocktail” for a Razor-Sharp Mind
And so we arrive at the… super question. What are the factors that make someone a superager, and could any of us become one of these sharp-minded elders? As Dr. Touroutoglou answers: “We have made progress in understanding what makes superagers ‘super’ — they can teach us a great deal, such as how to become resistant to Alzheimer’s — though many questions remain unanswered. In any case, it is almost certain that a combination of genes, environment, and behaviors — such as maintaining physical and mental alertness as well as social connections — is what leads an older person to retain a youthful brain. Among other things, it plays an important role to exercise throughout one’s life, to keep the brain engaged with intellectually stimulating activities, and to sustain relationships with other people throughout one’s entire life — to remain socially active.”
Many of the important steps that have “unlocked” the secrets of superagers’ young minds come from Professor Touroutoglou and her team. “Through our studies, we have discovered that superagers have a brain that looks decades younger — for example, the regions important for memory, and especially the hippocampus, have greater volume. In some cases, these areas are the same size as the brain of a young adult in their 20s. Another unexpected finding is that a brain region called the anterior midcingulate cortex is larger in superagers — in fact, the same size as in young people. I call this finding unexpected because that particular region is more closely associated with motivation and likely reflects persistence, resilience in the face of challenges — as opposed to advanced age, which is often accompanied by resignation.”
Powerful Connections
The other great challenge for the Harvard team was to discover how well-connected the superagers’ brains are. “We found that superagers have stronger connections between the different brain networks compared to their peers. We also found that they approach the memory process differently — they use more effective strategies for remembering. In another study, we discovered that superagers are more resilient even to the cognitive decline that occurs following surgery under general anesthesia — this type of cognitive impairment is very common in people of their age.”
In closing, Dr. Touroutoglou emphasizes that superagers are living proof that the aging of our brain is not inevitable. Science is pointing the way toward resistance against humanity’s biological destiny by venturing deep into the brains of these… youthful elders — and we hope that one day it will show all of us the path to old age with a… super brain!
