Some 80-Year-Olds Remember Like 50-Year-Olds. It Isn't Their Genes.

By Paul E. Bendheim, MD — Founder of BrainSavers; board-certified neurologist and Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix; author of The Brain Training Revolution: A Proven Workout for Healthy Brain Aging.

Of all the questions I am asked about brain aging, one comes up more than any other, and it is usually asked quietly, at the end of a talk. My mother had it. Isn't this all in my genes anyway? Underneath that question is a decision to stop trying. A new study published in Alzheimer's Research & Therapy gives me the best answer I have ever had.

Who The SuperAgers Are

There is a rare group of people researchers call SuperAgers. They are 80 and older, and their memory is not simply good for their age. It is at least as good as the memory of adults in middle age — people thirty years younger. Scientists have wanted to know what makes them for a long time.

In this study, researchers from the multisite SuperAging Research Initiative compared 231 older adults: 142 SuperAgers and 89 people whose memory was average for their age. Everyone was over 80. The average age in both groups was about 84, and none of them had dementia. The SuperAgers earned the label the hard way, on a memory test — recalling a list of words after a delay, at a level you would expect from someone decades younger.

Then the researchers looked at their DNA and asked one question. Is an extraordinary memory at 84 simply the luck of a good genetic draw?

What They Found

The gene everyone worries about made no difference. You may have heard of APOE. It is the best-known common gene linked to Alzheimer's risk. One version of it, called e4, raises risk. Another, called e2, appears to lower it. If SuperAging were just the mirror image of Alzheimer's risk, the SuperAgers should have carried far fewer of the risky version. They did not. About 16% of the SuperAgers carried it, compared with 19% of the average-memory group — a gap too small to mean anything. The protective version was equally common in both groups, about 13% each.

A much broader genetic scorecard made no difference either. The researchers went further. They used three modern "polygenic risk scores," which add up the small effects of many genes at once to estimate a person's inherited Alzheimer's risk. Not one of the three could tell a SuperAger from anyone else. The result held no matter what genetic ancestry the participants had.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

Here is the phrase I keep returning to. The authors concluded that low inherited risk looks permissive rather than determinative. Good genes may open the door to a long life without dementia. They do not walk you through it.

That is the answer to the question I get asked at the end of the talk. Whatever hand you were dealt, it does not appear to be what separates an ordinary memory at 84 from an extraordinary one. Something else does.

A Word Of Honesty

I want to be careful here, because I have spent a career insisting on it. This study did not measure how the SuperAgers lived. The authors say so plainly in their own list of limitations: vascular, lifestyle and behavioral factors were not part of the analysis. So nobody can tell you, on the strength of this paper, that exercise or diet or friendship is what made these people SuperAgers.

What this study did was close a door. It ruled out the most popular explanation for exceptional memory in very old age — and it did so in a carefully studied group, using the best genetic tools we have.

And then the authors pointed at the rooms still open. SuperAging, they wrote, likely reflects several pathways at once, including "life-course experiential factors." The examples they chose were vascular health, physical activity, and other modifiable exposures. Modifiable is a scientist's word for something you can change.

It's Not Rocket Science

When people ask me what to actually do with a finding like this one, my answer has not changed in twenty years:

"It's not rocket science; it's moving, it's eating a healthier diet, managing stress, getting good sleep, socializing and actually using your brain."

Three places to start this week:

• Take the walk. Physical activity is the first thing the authors named among the experiential factors worth investigating, and it is the first of the six lifestyle pillars we built BrainSavers around. Begin with a block.

• Mind your blood vessels. Vascular health was the other factor they named. Keep the appointment you have been putting off, and ask your healthcare provider about your blood pressure.

• Give your memory real work. The SuperAgers in this study were identified by what their memory could still do. A brain that is used is a brain that is being trained.

For years, the honest answer to "isn't it all in my genes?" was a shrug. Now we have 231 people over the age of 80 telling us something better. The SuperAgers among them are not carrying a rarer set of genes. They are carrying a life. You are not simply a passenger on the journey of your own brain aging — and this study suggests you may have more say in where it goes than you were ever told.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not medical advice. Talk with your own healthcare provider before making changes to your health, exercise, or medication routine.