The secrets to keeping your brain sharp in old age

Neuroscientist Emily Rogalski is uncovering the secrets of superagers Craig Boylan As you age, your memory will likely decline. Your ability to recall where you parked the car or the name of your first teacher will be less sharp in your 80s than in your 50s, if you’re in the majority of people. But a small pool of individuals in their 80s and beyond don’t experience this downturn: they have a memory that rivals that of people decades younger. It is this group that Emily Rogalski is interested in. Rogalski, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago and head of the ongoing superager study, is unpicking how these people manage to stay so sharp, even if they have signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain. Rogalski and her colleagues have already shown that so-called superagers have larger cerebral cortices and hippocampi, both areas of the brain associated with memory, and are now working to unravel the neural basis of their recall abilities. She tells New Scientist what makes someone a superager, and how you can boost your chances of becoming one. Alexandra Thompson: What is a superager? Emily Rogalski: A superager is an individual who is over 80 but has a memory that is at least as good as individuals’ in their 50s or 60s. Their other cognitive domains of language, like executive function and attention, need to be at least average for their age. Nearly everyone I run into can think of at least one person in their life – whether it’s an aunt, uncle, neighbour or friend – who you would never believe is 90. They act like they’re 50. We hear reports of older people achieving phenomenal physical feats, like centenarians running marathons. Why are you focusing on what it takes to have an extraordinary memory over other traits? Memory loss is the number one thing that older adults complain about as they get older, and it is also the cardinal symptom of Alzheimer’s. As a neuroscientist, that’s what I’m interested in. Individuals who have an extraordinary memory over the age of 80 have surpassed the biggest risk for Alzheimer’s, which is getting older. One way to study Alzheimer’s disease is to look at what’s going wrong and try to reverse it. The other is to identify people who are avoiding age-related memory loss, and in fact are thriving, and say, “How did you do that?” How do you find these people?