Some people seem to defy the passage of time. At 80 years old—and sometimes more—certain people have proved to have an agile mind, like from someone who’s 50. Scientists call them “Superagers.”
A 25 years study has been made by researchers of the Northwestern University and they just revealed how special this brains are.
The most impressive part is not the results on the tests for memory or cognition: ”It’s really what we’ve found in their brains that’s been so earth-shattering for us,” explains Northwestern University clinical neuropsychologist Sandra Weintraub: structures that seem to have resisted the typical damage for Alzheimer, less inflammation and a astonishing stability in key points for thinking and emotion.
What differentiates the Superagers from the rest?
In Superagers, the cerebral cortex—the outer layer of the brain that controls thought, language and memory—doesn’t get thiner over the years, as it happens int the majority of people. But also, there’s a bigger amount of von Economo neurons, weird cells that concentrate in the anterior cingulate gyrus; a zone in charge of attention, emotions and decision making.
Weintraub‘s team, also found out the entorhinal neurons, that also send information to the hippocampus (memory’s central region), are bigger and more active in Superagers. This could explain the impressive resistant to Alzheimer.
These brains not only age extremely slower than usual but they seem to be designed to conserve their connexions.
Endurance and resilience: two brain superpowers
“What we realized is there are two mechanisms that lead someone to become a superager,” said Weintraub. According to the researchers, there are two main mechanisms that explain the phenomenon:
- Resistance: they don’t make the plaques and tangles that are typically associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
- Resilience: some of them make them, but they don’t do anything to their brains.
This double protection could be related to a higher neuronal plasticity, which is the brain’s capacity to adapt and repare connexions. They also found less inflammation in the white matter, providing a better connexion between neurons.
In the memory tests, Superagers managed to remember 9 or more words out of a list of 15, a typical result from a person that’s two or three decades younger. Barely 5% of the populations reach that level.
Beyond lifestyle: genetics and biology
What’s curious about the lifestyle of Superagers is that not all of them have healthy habits. Some of them smoke, or drink alcohol, which suggests that an important part of their “mental powers” comes from biology. Many appear to have been born with more von Economo neurons, or with a thicker anterior cingulate gyrus structure.
“Many of the findings from this paper stem from the examination of brain specimens of generous, dedicated superagers who were followed for decades,” said Tamar Gefen. The study was financed in big part by donations (like the one from Ralph Rehbock), and included the monitoring of 290 people over 80 years old since 2000. From the participants, 79 donated their brains after passing away, which allowed the scientists to observed the differences in a direct way.
The secret of healthy aging
The Supergagers study demonstrate that age is not always what dictates mental capacity. Their brains keep their length, and the cerebral cortex active, which shows less signals of damage and loss. This combination of neuronal plasticity, biological resistance and emotional balance could be the key to a healthy aging.
Researches believe that finding the genes that affect this resistance to Alzheimer, could help design medicine that keeps the brain young for longer. This discovery clearly marks an importance advance in neuroscience. Today, Superagers makes us believe in a future where having a young mind at 80 years old would be something normal.