1. Youthful Memory Capacity in Old Brains: Anatomic and Genetic Clues from the Northwestern SuperAging Project.
- Author
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Rogalski, Emily J., Gefen, Tamar, Shi, Junzi, Samimi, Mehrnoosh, Bigio, Eileen, Weintraub, Sandra, Geula, Changiz, and Mesulam, M. Marsel
- Subjects
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ALZHEIMER'S disease , *MAGNETIC resonance imaging , *BRAIN , *APOLIPOPROTEIN E , *NERVOUS system , *PATHOLOGY - Abstract
The Northwestern University SuperAging Project recruits community dwellers over the age of 80 who have unusually high performance on tests of episodic memory. In a previous report, a small cohort of SuperAgers was found to have higher cortical thickness on structural MRI than a group of agematched but cognitively average peers. SuperAgers also displayed a patch of ACC where cortical thickness was higher than in 50- to 60-year-old younger cognitively healthy adults. In additional analyses, some SuperAgers had unusually low densities of age-related Alzheimer pathology and unusually high numbers of von Economo neurons in the anterior cingulate gyrus. SuperAgers were also found to have a lower frequency of the ε4 allele of apolipoprotein E than the general population. These preliminary results show that above-average memory capacity can be encountered in advanced age. They also offer clues to potential biological factors that may promote resistance to age-related involutional changes in the structure and function of the brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
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