Age Wise
The Mysterious, Remarkable Memories of ‘Superagers’
Some old brains look and work like those of twenty-somethings
Among the frustrations of growing older, at least for many of us, is the increasing struggle to remember people we’ve met, or what was for lunch yesterday. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why: Our brains shrink, and communication between different parts gets fuzzy.
But for some older folks, dubbed by scientists as “superagers,” the brain remains remarkably and mysteriously intact, virtually indistinguishable by several measures from the noggins of 20-somethings. Separate groups of scientists around the country study these superagers on an ongoing basis, as they age so darn gracefully, in hopes of finding ways to prevent dementia in the rest of us.
A new study examine the brains of people, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), as they took complex memory tests involving the recall of images and descriptions. One group of 40 people was, on average, 67 years old. Another similar-sized group averaged age 25. The superagers’ visual cortexes — where what we see is processed and shuttled to the other parts of the brain — did not look or perform like those of other people their age.
