Superagers have better recall abilities than peers, reveals study

Superagers, or people in their eighties with memory recall as good as someone decades younger, are likely to be swifter and display lower anxiety and depression than typical older adults, according to new research published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal. Superagers have been seen to avoid the natural deterioration of memory with age. The observational study from Spain aimed to find out if this was because superagers were resistant to or if they had coping mechanisms empowering them to overcome age-related memory decline better than their peers.

“Our findings suggest superagers are resistant to these processes, though the precise reasons for this are still unclear,” said first author Marta Garo-Pascual of the Queen Sofia Foundation Alzheimer Centre, Madrid, Spain.

For the study, 64 superagers and 55 typical older adults, performing cognitively well but not displaying superager memory ability, were chosen. They were aged 79.5 years or older and were picked from The Vallecas Project cohort, Madrid. The cohort comprising 1,213 participants aged 69-86 years with no neurological or severe psychiatric disorders was recruited between 2011 and 2014.

‘Superagers’ MRI scans showed more grey matter, the brain tissue vital for normal functioning, in key parts separately involved in memory and movement. Their overall grey matter was also seen to degenerate more slowly over the 5-year follow-up period than in typical older adults.

Swifter movements and enhanced mental health were the factors most associated with superagers, the authors found using a machine learning model, that included 89 demographic, lifestyle, and clinical predictors of the participants.

Superagers were also found to fare better on mobility and fine motor function tests, indicating a mobility, agility and balance superior to those of typical older adults, despite no differences in the two groups’ self-reported exercise levels.