Most people expect their memory to slip a little as the years go by. Names take longer to surface, and the reason for walking into the kitchen sometimes vanishes on the way. Yet some people reach their 80s with a memory that would be the envy of someone 30 years younger. Researchers have been studying these people for a quarter of a century, and what they have found is encouraging, even if it does not add up to a simple recipe.
These are the people scientists call “SuperAgers.” Looking at what sets them apart, from their brains to the way they live, offers some useful clues for anyone hoping to stay mentally sharp in the decades after retirement.
Who counts as a SuperAger
The term comes from the SuperAging Program at Northwestern University in Chicago, which began in 2000. To qualify, a person has to be 80 or older and perform on memory tests at least as well as people three decades younger. In practice, that means recalling at least nine out of 15 words in a delayed recall test, a score on a par with people in their 50s and 60s.
In 2025, the program’s researchers, including Professor Sandra Weintraub, published a look back over its first 25 years in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. The original paper reports 290 program participants and 77 brain autopsies. The program follows both SuperAgers and comparison participants; these totals describe the research program as a whole.
A separate team in Spain has studied a similar group. The Vallecas Project in Madrid compared 64 people aged about 80 and over whose memory matched that of people around 30 years younger with similar education, against 55 people of the same age whose memory was typical for their years. Their findings, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity in 2023, add a useful second view from another country.
What researchers found inside their brains
As most brains age, the cortex, the wrinkled outer layer involved in thinking and memory, gradually becomes thinner. In comparisons with younger adults, SuperAgers’ cortex appeared unusually well preserved. Follow-up research nevertheless found thinning over time, at a slower rate than in their same-age peers. One region, the anterior cingulate cortex, was in some studies thicker than in much younger adults.
When researchers examined the donated brains, they found more of a particular kind of nerve cell called von Economo neurons, which are linked to social behaviour. They also found larger cells in the entorhinal cortex, an area important for memory and one of the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
Perhaps the most striking findings concern resilience and resistance to Alzheimer’s-related changes. Some SuperAgers showed very few neurofibrillary tangles, while others maintained exceptional memory despite having some of these changes. In the Northwestern paper, resistance describes having less of the pathology, while resilience describes maintaining cognitive function despite it. That is different from saying the deposits cause no damage or that a SuperAger’s brain is immune to disease.
The Spanish study pointed in the same direction. Brain scans showed SuperAgers had more grey matter in areas tied to memory, and over five years that grey matter declined more slowly than in their peers.
What their lives tend to look like
Here is where the research becomes most interesting for everyone else, and also where it needs to be read carefully.
The clearest pattern from Northwestern is social. SuperAgers tend to be outgoing people who report strong, satisfying relationships with others. That fits neatly with the finding of extra von Economo neurons, although the research cannot say which comes first: whether a sociable life helps keep the brain healthy, or whether a particular kind of brain makes a sociable life come more easily.
Other habits were less uniform. Northwestern reports that SuperAgers’ approaches to exercise vary, and the researchers have not found one lifestyle that they all share.
The Madrid study found several other differences. SuperAgers moved more quickly and more nimbly on tests of walking and fine finger movement, even though they did not report exercising more than their peers. They scored lower on measures of anxiety and depression. They were more likely to say they had been active in midlife, more satisfied with how long they slept, and more likely to have a musical background.
None of these differences, on their own, explained who became a SuperAger. When the researchers fed 89 different measures into a computer model, it could pick out the SuperAgers only about two-thirds of the time. The authors suggest that other factors, possibly genetic, play a part. Interestingly, the best-known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s, a version of a gene called APOE, was no more or less common in the SuperAgers than in the comparison group.
A reason to get up in the morning
Another strand of research looks beyond memory tests to the sense of meaning in a person’s life. At the Rush Memory and Aging Project in Chicago, researchers led by Patricia Boyle followed 951 older adults who did not have dementia, assessing them each year for an average of four years.
Participants were asked how strongly they agreed with statements such as “I feel good when I think of what I have done in the past and what I hope to do in the future.” In the 2010 paper in Archives of General Psychiatry, people with a strong sense of purpose were about 2.4 times more likely to remain free of Alzheimer’s disease over the study period than those with a weak sense of purpose. They were also less likely to develop milder memory problems, and their thinking declined more slowly.
As with the SuperAger research, this shows a link rather than proof that purpose protects the brain. The authors did suggest, though, that purpose is something people may be able to build, which makes it one of the more hopeful findings in this field.
What anyone can act on
SuperAgers are, by definition, unusual. For most people, the more practical question is how to lower the risk of decline, and here the evidence is broader. In 2024, an international group of experts known as the Lancet Commission on dementia, led by psychiatrist Gill Livingston, identified 14 risk factors that can be changed or treated across a lifetime.
The commission report lists less education in early life; hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, depression, head injury, physical inactivity, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure, obesity and heavy drinking in midlife; and social isolation, air pollution and untreated vision loss later in life. The commission estimated that addressing all 14 could potentially prevent or delay around 45 per cent of dementia cases worldwide, a figure that assumes each factor is a genuine cause and could be removed entirely.
Several items on that list sit comfortably alongside what the SuperAger studies suggest. Staying connected with other people, keeping physically active, looking after mood and having hearing and eyesight checked are all things many people in retirement can do something about. This is general information rather than medical advice, and anyone worried about their memory or their risk is best to talk it through with their GP.
What the research cannot yet say
It is tempting to read a list of SuperAger traits as instructions: be sociable, play music, sleep well, and an excellent memory at 85 will follow. The scientists involved are careful not to claim that. Their studies observe people who are already exceptional and look back at how they live. They cannot show that adopting those habits later in life will produce the same result, and both the Northwestern and Madrid groups are relatively small and drawn from particular places.
What the research does show is that significant memory loss is not an inevitable part of growing old. Some brains stay very healthy into the ninth decade, sometimes even in the presence of the changes people most fear. For anyone in or approaching retirement, that is a hopeful starting point. Good friendships, an active body, something to look forward to and a doctor who checks the basics may not guarantee a SuperAger’s memory, but on this evidence they are well worth keeping.
Photo: Alena Darmel / Pexels
