{"id":5217,"date":"2024-04-29T17:08:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T17:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5217"},"modified":"2024-04-29T17:26:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T17:26:02","slug":"a-peek-inside-the-brains-of-super-agers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5217","title":{"rendered":"A Peek Inside the Brains of \u2018Super-Agers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New research explores why some octogenarians have exceptional memories.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the case for everyone.<\/p>\n

For a little over a decade, scientists have been studying a subset of people they call \u201csuper-agers.\u201d These individuals are age 80 and up, but they have the memory ability of a person 20 to 30 years younger.<\/p>\n

Most research on aging and memory focuses on the other side of the equation \u2014 people who develop dementia in their later years. But, \u201cif we\u2019re constantly talking about what\u2019s going wrong in aging, it\u2019s not capturing the full spectrum of what\u2019s happening in the older adult population,\u201d said Emily Rogalski, a professor of neurology at the University of Chicago, who published one of the first studies<\/a> on super-agers in 2012.<\/p>\n

A paper published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience<\/a> helps shed light on what\u2019s so special about the brains of super-agers. The biggest takeaway, in combination with a companion study<\/a> that came out last year on the same group of individuals, is that their brains have less atrophy than their peers\u2019 do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s disease in their brains.<\/p>\n

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New research explores why some octogenarians have exceptional memories.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\u2019s not the case for everyone.For a little over a decade, scientists have been studying a subset of people they call \u201csuper-agers.\u201d These individuals are age 80 and up, but they have the memory ability of a person 20 to 30 years younger.Most research on aging and memory focuses on the other side of the equation \u2014 people who develop dementia in their later years. But, \u201cif we\u2019re constantly talking about what\u2019s going wrong in aging, it\u2019s not capturing the full spectrum of what\u2019s happening in the older adult population,\u201d said Emily Rogalski, a professor of neurology at the University of Chicago, who published one of the first studies on super-agers in 2012.A paper published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience helps shed light on what\u2019s 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\u2019 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\u2019s disease in their brains.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5219,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5220,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions\/5220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}