Are you a ‘superager’?
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A rare subset of people, known as ‘superagers’, can grow older without their minds being affected.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These lucky few maintain youthful memories and are able to recall new experiences, events, and situations just as well as younger people, despite being in their 60s, 70s, or 80s.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">New research, published in </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab157" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cerebral Cortex</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, has captured what the brains of these individuals look like using MRI, suggesting that their brains have resisted the march of time.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While performing a challenging memory task, the brain scans showed that the activity in the heads of superagers appeared identical to those aged, on average, in their mid-20s. Superagers performed better than other participants their age and were on par with much younger adults.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Using MRI, we found that the structure of superagers’ brains and the connectivity of their neural networks more closely resemble the brains of young adults; superagers had avoided the brain atrophy typically seen in older adults,” said neurologist Alexandra Touroutoglou from Massachusetts General Hospital.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“This is the first time we have images of the function of superagers’ brains as they actively learn and remember new information.”</span></p>
<p><strong>A recent area of interest</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This group of older people with incredible memories have only recently come to the attention of scientists, with their unusual ageing process intriguing many working in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As we grow older, age-related memory is expected even without suffering from dementia. But, superagers seem to go against this natural process.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Initial research has found superagers may have </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.sciencealert.com/less-than-5-superagers-what-they-have-in-common-elderly-sharp-cognitive" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">particular personality traits</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> - such as high levels of extroversion and low levels of neuroticism - that play a role in their preserved memories, while other studies suggest it could simply be a </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/cognitive-super-agers-defy-typical-age-related-decline-brainpower" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">genetic lottery</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That said, researchers are calling for more studies to explore just why some of us have youthful minds well into our older years, which could help stave the memory loss of those with dementia.</span></p>
