Defying time: How ‘superagers’ maintain mental acuity into late old age

Emma Pitts
·3 min read
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Two elderly women enjoy the day while they rest outside a shop, in Pamplona, northern Spain, on June 17, 2013.
Two elderly women enjoy the day while they rest outside a shop, in Pamplona, northern Spain, on June 17, 2013. | Alvaro Barrientos, Associated Press

The idea that your brain will invariably decline cognitively as you age is not necessarily true.

If you’re reading this at age of 18, 30 or 55 — there's hope ahead.

Researchers in Spain conducted a study that compared two groups: typical older adults and superagers.

Superagers are people who are age 80 or older that have the brain function of someone 30 years their junior.

The study, published Thursday in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal, included 55 typical older adults (35 women and 20 men) and 64 superagers (38 women and 26 men).

They discovered that superagers had higher volumes of gray matter, which is an essential tissue in the brain and spinal cord that plays significant roles in memory, movement and emotions.

Superagers also showed slower signs of gray matter deterioration than normal-cognition adults.

“Though superagers report similar activity levels to typical older people, it’s possible they do more physically demanding activities like gardening or stair climbing,” said study author Bryan Strange, director of the Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience at the Technical University of Madrid, per CNN.

He added, “From lower blood pressure and obesity levels to increased blood flow to the brain, there are many direct and indirect benefits of being physically active that may contribute to improved cognitive abilities in old age.”

Related

Although brains shrink with age, in a separate study on superagers in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers discovered that parts of superagers’ brains had a thicker anterior cingulate cortex compared to the healthy brains of 50- to 60-year-olds in the study.

The anterior cingulate cortex is part of the brain that processes empathy, decision-making and learning, among other purposes.

Researchers believe that by studying the lifestyle of superagers, they could find answers to Alzheimer’s prevention.

“We are now closer to solving one of the biggest unanswered questions about superagers: whether they are truly resistant to age-related memory decline or they have coping mechanisms that help them overcome this decline better than their peers,” study author Marta Garo-Pascual told The Economic Times.

She continued, “Our findings suggest superagers are resistant to these processes, though the precise reasons for this are still unclear. By looking further into links between superaging and movement speed we may be able to gain important insights into the mechanisms behind the preservation of memory function deep into old age,”

Among health tips from Northwestern Medicine for people looking for proactive ways to maintain their mental capacity into old age:

  • Live an active lifestyle.

  • Continue to challenge yourself.

  • Maintain social relationships.

  • Eat a plant-based diet.

Superagers in the study also said they maintained active lifestyles throughout their life, were happy with the amount of sleep they got and were overall independent individuals.

The insights gathered about superagers resistant to memory loss that is typical with age could have great impacts on Alzheimer’s prevention efforts, experts say.

“It’s invigorating to know that there are good trajectories of aging,” said Emily Rogalski, who was on the research team that coined the term “superagers.” “It’s possible to live long and live well,” per The Washington Post.