"Superager:" It's what you want to be

We old people often compare notes on how we’re doing brain-wise. What I and many others notice the most, in terms of decline, is being unable to bring words and names to mind. The concern behind these discussions, of course, is Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. What we wish for is to be superagers, a term coined by a neurologist for old people whose brains are on par with healthy 25-year-olds. 

For me, this degree of mental sharpness brings to mind Warren Buffet (born 1930) and Eric Kandel (born 1929), both of whom I often see being interviewed on television. They’re never grasping for words! Kandel, by the way, is a Nobel prize-winning neuropsychiatrist. Both men still work at their professions. (They also seem to be cheerful types.)

Buffet

Kandel

 To discover the anatomical basis of superagers' acuity, researchers compared the brains of superagers to those of other people of similar age. What they found was that certain regions of the "ordinary" people's brains were diminished in size because of age-related atrophy, while those same regions in superagers’ brains were indistinguishable from those of young people. Those regions, by the way, used to be considered the “emotional” regions, but it turns out they are major hubs for general communication throughout the brain and include the coordination of the five senses into a cohesive experience. (They're called the midcingulate cortex and anterior insula, if anybody cares.)

So far, it looks like the formula for a youthful brain is working hard at something. Many labs have observed increased activity in the brain regions mentioned above when people perform difficult tasks, either physical or mental. Do it till it hurts and then a bit more, they advise. Sorry. Sudoku, crosswords, and those brain games aren’t hard enough.

Dang! Writing this blog probably isn’t hard enough either. Apparently I have to learn a new language or master a musical instrument or learn to pole vault or some other improbable achievement.

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