A Peek Inside the Brains of “Super-Agers”

By Dana G. Smith - April 29, 2024

When it comes to aging, we tend to assume that cognition gets worse as we get older. Our thoughts may slow down or become confused, or we may start to forget things, like the name of our high school English teacher or what we meant to buy at the grocery store.

But that’s not the case for everyone.

For a little over a decade, scientists have been studying a subset of people they call “super-agers.” These individuals are age 80 and up, but they have the memory ability of a person 20 to 30 years younger.

A paper published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience helps shed light on what’s so special about the brains of super-agers.

A paper published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience helps shed light on what’s so special about the brains of super-agers. The biggest takeaway, in combination with a companion study that came out last year on the same group of individuals, is that their brains have less atrophy than their peers’ do.

The research was conducted on 119 octogenarians from Spain: 64 super-agers and 55 older adults with normal memory abilities for their age. The participants completed multiple tests assessing their memory, motor and verbal skills; underwent brain scans and blood draws; and answered questions about their lifestyle and behaviors.

The scientists found that the super-agers had more volume in areas of the brain important for memory, most notably the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. They also had better preserved connectivity between regions in the front of the brain that are involved in cognition.

Both the super-agers and the control group showed minimal signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains.

Most notably, the super-agers had slightly better physical health, both in terms of blood pressure and glucose metabolism, and they performed better on a test of mobility. The super-agers didn’t report doing more exercise at their current age than the typical older adults, but they were more active in middle age.