Originally published 12/14/2018
Think about the people in your life who are 65 or older.
Some of them are experiencing the usual mental difficulties of old age, like forgetfulness or a dwindling attention span. Yet others somehow manage to remain mentally sharp.
Why do some older people remain mentally nimble while others decline?
“Superagers” (a term coined by the neurologist Marsel Mesulam) are those whose memory and attention isn’t merely above average for their age, but is actually on par with healthy, active 25-year-olds.
You’ve got to work hard at it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett and her colleagues and I at Massachusetts General Hospital recently studied superagers to understand what made them tick.
The lab used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan and compare the brains of 17 superagers with those of other people of similar age. They identified a set of brain regions that distinguished the two groups. These regions were thinner for regular agers, a result of age-related atrophy, but in superagers they were indistinguishable from those of young adults, seemingly untouched by the ravages of time.
Nearly all the action was in “emotional” regions, such as the midcingulate cortex and the anterior insula. The team was not surprised by this discovery, because we’ve seen modern neuroscience debunk the notion that there is a distinction between “cognitive” and “emotional” brain regions.
In the words of the neuroscientist Georg Striedter, “brains evolve like companies do: they reorganize as they expand”.
Brain areas that Dr. MacLean considered emotional, such as the regions of the “limbic system,” are now known to be major hubs for general communication throughout the brain. They’re important for many functions besides emotion, such as language, stress, regulation of internal organs, and even the coordination of the five senses into a cohesive experience.
And now, research demonstrates that these major hub regions play a meaningful role in superaging. The thicker these regions of cortex are, the better a person’s performance on tests of memory and attention, such as memorizing a list of nouns and recalling it 20 minutes later.
Of course, the big question is: How do you become a superager?
Which activities, if any, will increase your chances of remaining mentally sharp into old age?
“We’re still studying this question, but our best answer at the moment is: work hard at something.”
You can help keep these regions thick and healthy through vigorous exercise and bouts of strenuous mental effort.
This means that pleasant puzzles like Sudoku are not enough to provide the benefits of superaging. Neither are the popular diversions of various “brain game” websites. You must expend enough effort that you feel some “yuck.” Do it till it hurts, and then a bit more.
All brain tissue gets thinner from disuse. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
So, make a New Year’s resolution to take up a challenging activity. Learn a foreign language. Take an online college course. Master a musical instrument.
Work that brain. Make it a year to remember.
