Superagers defy memory decline even with Alzheimer’s signs

superagers over – A UChicago neuroscientist is studying “superagers”—people over 80 with memories as sharp as those in their 50s or 60s—who sometimes carry Alzheimer’s pathology in their brains. The research points to social engagement, attention-linked brain differences, and r

At first glance, nothing looks different when they walk into a clinic. Then the memory tests start.

In old age. most people’s ability to recall where they parked the car—or even the name of their first teacher—tends to blur compared with their 50s. But a small group of individuals in their 80s and beyond don’t follow that script. Their memory stays at least as good as that of people decades younger. It’s this gap—between what aging usually does and what some people manage to resist—that has pulled neuroscientist Emily Rogalski into the work of finding out how.

Rogalski. at the University of Chicago and head of the ongoing superager study. is unpicking how these “superagers” keep their recall sharp even when their brains show signs associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Her team has already reported differences in brain areas tied to memory: superagers have larger cerebral cortices and hippocampi. Now they are working to unravel the neural basis of the memory that seems to keep time with much younger brains.

“Superager” has a strict definition in Rogalski’s research. It is an individual who is over 80 but whose memory is at least as good as individuals’ in their 50s or 60s. Their other cognitive domains—including language and functions such as executive function and attention—also need to be at least average for their age.

Rogalski describes meeting people who look and act far younger than their years—“an aunt, uncle, neighbour or friend” who you would never believe is 90. The description is familiar in conversation, but in her study, it becomes measurable.

She also frames the focus in an urgent way. Memory loss is the number one thing older adults complain about as they get older. and it is the cardinal symptom of Alzheimer’s. “As a neuroscientist. ” she says. the question isn’t only what goes wrong; it is how some people avoid age-related memory loss and. in fact. are thriving. The logic is simple: one way to study Alzheimer’s is to reverse the damage. The other is to look for people who appear to have found a way around it.

Finding those people starts in familiar places. Rogalski’s team spends a lot of time in the community—farmers’ markets and retirement communities—giving lectures on healthy ageing. She also points to word of mouth, noting that some superagers are good at finding other superagers. The study began with enrollment from the Chicago area. but it has expanded so the research team is now across five sites in the US and Canada. That spread is meant to offer regional representation, along with racial and ethnic representation.

When a prospective superager comes in, they don’t just take a single test. They complete cognitive tests and surveys, take part in a clinical interview and a brief neurological exam, and they undergo an MRI scan. They also have a blood draw to look at genetic factors.

Rogalski says many people arrive without realizing how extraordinary their memory is. Some report not having had it all their lives. Yet when the results come in, they often feel the surprise—and then, she says, they are “very proud.”

Participation also continues. Superagers “are with us for life and beyond,” Rogalski says, because they don’t attend only initial visits. They return every two years. Every six months, the study includes check-in phone calls. And after death. participants donate their brains. allowing the researchers to look at cellular and molecular factors that can’t be studied in the living.

What do autopsy results tend to show?. Rogalski says that overall, there tends to be less tau—an Alzheimer’s-related protein that can form tangles—in superagers. But the story doesn’t fit neatly into reassurance. There are individuals with an abundance of Alzheimer’s-related pathologies so severe that a neuropathologist might say the person likely had cognitive impairment. Other case studies, she adds, show the opposite: exceedingly less pathology than researchers would expect for a 95-year-old.

That contradiction pushes the project into deeper uncertainty. Some people are genetically protected against Alzheimer’s, but Rogalski’s findings suggest that cannot be the whole explanation. In the early days of the superagers project. she says. she was repeatedly asked whether superagers might simply be low-risk for Alzheimer’s. But when her team compares them against cognitively average individuals. she says controls do not significantly differ genetically from the superagers. There are even people at very high risk for Alzheimer’s who still fall into the superageing group.

So if genetics isn’t neatly separating the groups, what else might be doing the work? Rogalski says the team doesn’t have a “magic recipe,” but it has seen unique cellular markers linked with super-ageing.

One is the presence of an abundance of Von Economo neurons. a special type of neuron described in only two regions of the brain: the anterior cingulate and the frontal insular cortex. In the anterior cingulate, superagers have four to five times the number of these neurons compared with other groups. And on MRI scans, the anterior cingulate cortex is thicker in superagers than it is in people aged 50 to 60. Rogalski links that region to attention, and attention, in turn, to memory.

For all the brain measurements, the project keeps returning to a theme that looks, at first, less like biology and more like how people live: socializing.

Rogalski says the number one tie among superagers is that they tend to be socially active. If someone makes it to 111. their peers aren’t alive anymore. she notes. so connection with younger generations becomes essential to avoid social isolation and loneliness. In the study, those connections take different forms. Sometimes it is volunteering in classrooms with much younger people. Sometimes, for someone who is 95, it is finding connection with someone who is 65 in the same retirement community.

She also describes another recurring feature: adaptability, grit, and resilience. You might assume, she says, that everyone who becomes a superager had an easy life. “That’s not what we see.” She points to an individual who was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust and who spent time in a concentration camp. She also mentions people who lost their kids at a young age. In these stories. she says. the pattern is a kind of determination to bounce back—“Life has handed me something difficult. but I’m going to bounce back.”.

Diet and exercise, too, show surprising variation. Rogalski says there is ample evidence about the importance of diet, but it doesn’t show up consistently among superagers. Many of them say, “Gosh, it can’t be my diet. I had way too many TV dinners as a child.” Exercise varies just as widely. For some, it might be chair stretching because they need a wheelchair. For others, it can be biking hundreds of miles.

One memory sticks with her. She recalls hearing about someone who survived the Holocaust. describing the experience as “very moving.” When Rogalski met her. she was over 90 and running the gift shop in her retirement community. The point, Rogalski says, wasn’t just survival. It was connection—finding connection, being willing to share stories, and being willing to learn.

That living engagement is where Rogalski draws a line back to the brain. She argues that the brain loves novelty and challenge. “When we lift weights, we get out of our physical comfort zone,” she says, building muscle through effort. The brain needs the same kind of pushing. Conversations with people you don’t know. even when they feel hard at first. become a form of mental exercise—helping keep the brain active.

Her team also sees a specific benefit when older adults seek out the company of much younger people. Rogalski calls it co-mentorship: older adults mentor kids, and kids mentor older adults. She describes a gentleman who moved back in with his daughter not because he had to. physically or mentally. but because he wanted to maintain connection with his grandkids. He tells Rogalski that he needs to remember they don’t know much about Frank Sinatra. so he asks questions like. “Is Chance the Rapper coming to town. or Taylor Swift?” It’s another way of staying cognitively and socially engaged.

The project carefully wrestles with a tempting alternative explanation: maybe it isn’t socializing that protects the brain. but the other way around. People who are already cognitively sharp might be more able to socialize, making it look like connection causes better outcomes. Rogalski says her team has to be careful about teasing out what is causal versus what is simply associated. Still. she adds that they do see something else: people who stay socially connected even in the face of Alzheimer’s tend to decline more slowly.

In the middle of all those findings—MRI scans, autopsy data, and cellular markers—Rogalski says she hears a question that refuses to stay academic: what do superagers do day to day?

When she asks what makes someone a superager, she remembers a pair of friends who joined the project together. They answered with a daily ritual: “It’s because we have a martini together every day at 5pm.” Rogalski makes clear that she isn’t trying to endorse alcohol. What she does emphasize is the context around the ritual—“That daily martini is how they are making connections and finding a point of calm.”.

For anyone hoping to become one, the advice Rogalski returns to is not genetic fortune-telling. “We used to think of genetics as, ‘shoot, I picked the wrong parents,’” she says, but genetics is more complex than that. The “hand” people are dealt, she argues, is somewhat modifiable.

And in practical terms, it keeps coming back to social connection. If you are walking home from work and find yourself choosing between distractions—listening to music or calling a friend—Rogalski says to call your friend.

In a project built on definitions and scans, that final message may sound almost too human. But for Rogalski. it’s consistent with the strongest thread her study has found: people who keep their memories sharp into old age often build lives where the brain gets challenged socially. where attention stays engaged. and where connection doesn’t fade when the world does.

superagers Emily Rogalski Alzheimer’s disease memory loss social connection neuroscience MRI Von Economo neurons tau hippocampus anterior cingulate cortex