Super-agers have an incredibly sharp memory, comparable to people 30 years younger than them, as per a study published in The Journal Of Neuroscience. Super-agers are people in their 80s with excellent cognitive and physical functioning.
The study stated that super-agers have less brain atrophy compared to people in the same age group. Also called cerebral atrophy, brain atrophy is a loss of neurons and connections between neurons.
This particular study was conducted on 119 octogenarians, including “64 super-agers (mean age 81.9; 59% women) and 55 typical older adults (mean age 82.4; 64% women)”.
The study added, “We studied the white matter structure of a large sample of 64 super-agers over the age of 80 and 55 age-matched typical older adults during 5 years with yearly follow-ups showing evidence of slower age-related changes in the brains of super-agers especially in protracted maturation tracts, indicating resistance to age-related changes and a regional ageing pattern in line with the last-in-first-out hypothesis.”
Each of these participants was asked to complete a variety of tests, which assessed their memory, motor and verbal skills.
The study noted that while “memory normally declines with age, some older people may have memory performance similar to that of people 30 years younger.”
It stated that this phenomenon is “conceptualised as super ageing.”
The study revealed, “Super-agers and typical older adults showed no difference in global white matter health (total white matter volume, Fazekas score, and lesions volume) cross-sectionally or longitudinally. However, analyses of diffusion parameters revealed better white matter microstructure in super-agers than in typical older adults.”
The findings also stated, “Cross-sectional differences showed higher fractional anisotropy (FA) in super-agers mostly in frontal fibres and lower mean diffusivity (MD) in most white matter tracts, expressed as an anteroposterior gradient with greater group differences in anterior tracts.”
The study further noted that the decline of this FA progresses at a slower rate in super-agers compared to the usual aging trajectory observed in older adults. Additionally, researchers found that the white matter microstructure remains more intact in super-agers than in their typical adult counterparts.
The researchers claimed that understanding the phenotype of any super-ager can detail the “mechanisms of protection against age-related memory loss and dementia.”
