“Superagers” – people aged 80 or over with exceptionally good memories – may have larger than expected neurons in a region of the brain that is critical for memory.
With age, most people experience a gradual decline to their memory, but some maintain a remarkable ability to recall past events into their eighties or older, on par with people 20 to 30 years younger.
Alongside a decline in memory, our brains naturally shrink with age, with previous studies suggesting this occurs less with superagers.
Now, researchers have shown that superagers may have larger than expected neurons in their entorhinal cortex, a component of the brain’s memory system.
Among the superagers, their entorhinal cortex neurons were around 10 per cent larger than those of the people who died at a similar age with a to-be-expected memory.
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The superagers also had substantially fewer protein clumps called tau tangles inside their neurons than their counterparts who died at a similar age. An abnormal build-up of tau has been suggested as a cause of Alzheimer’s disease.
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According to Joseph Andreano, also at Harvard Medical School, other brain regions linked to cognition have been shown to differ in size in superagers compared with people with a to-be-expected memory. It is unclear whether neuron size in the entorhinal cortex specifically accounts for enhanced memory, he says.
