The Brain in Super Agers

My Twitter post on a recently published study of brain structure in a group of high performing older adults received quite a bit of attention (see below).

Felicia Sun and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School selected an interesting research design.

A group of elderly subjects between the ages of 60 and 80 years were identified as showing "superaging". This was defined as scoring like young adults on two neuropsychological tests: The Long Delay Free Recall measure of the California Verbal Learning Test and part B of the Trail Making Test.

They then imaged the brain structure and function of the super agers using MRI. The results were compared to two groups: elderly adults without superior cognitive performance and younger adults with age-typical neuropsychological performance.

A key finding from their study was that super agers had brain hippocampal volumes greater than typical older adults and this measure was comparable to young adults.

Super agers also had greater brain volumes than typical older adults in the following regions:

• Anterior temporal cortex
• Medial frontal cortex
• Anterior midcingulate cortex

The authors noted in the discussion section:

"We found support for our hypothesis regarding the structural integrity of the default mode and salience networks, with superagers showing much less atrophy than typical older adults in key nodes of these networks, which we refer to as the "superageing signature".

The authors also note their longitudinal study was not able to identify the factors that may play a key role in super agers. Candidate factors include genetic factors, exercise, diet and social activity levels. These factors are likely to be studied in future research.

Readers with more interest in this study can access the free full-text manuscript by clicking the citation link below.

Figure of hippocampus is an iPad screen shot from the app 3D Brain.

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"Study suggests how 'super aging' older adults retain youthful memory abilities" #neuroscience #feedly https://t.co/DdlXUGbRRp

— W.R.Yates, M.D.✍ (@WRY999) September 14, 2016

Sun FW, Stepanovic MR, Andreano J, Barrett LF, Touroutoglou A, & Dickerson BC (2016). Youthful Brains in Older Adults: Preserved Neuroanatomy in the Default Mode and Salience Networks Contributes to Youthful Memory in Superaging. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 36 (37), 9659-9668 PMID: 27629716