80-Year-Old People With The Brains Of 20-Somethings: How Is This Possible?

The brain ages with a person, and that’s a fact. Over time, its performance deteriorates, and a person’s life is deeply affected as he faces difficulty in many cognitive processes such as recalling things and paying attention.

At some point in our 20s or 30s, something starts to change in our brains. They begin to shrink a little bit. The myelin that insulates our nerves begins to lose some of its integrity. Fewer and fewer chemical messages get sent as our brains make fewer neurotransmitters.

As we get older, these processes increase. Brain weight decreases by about 5 percent per decade after 40. The frontal lobe and hippocampus — areas related to memory encoding — begin to shrink mainly around 60 or 70. But this is just an unfortunate reality; you can't always be young, and things will begin to break down eventually. That's part of the reason why some individuals think that we should all hope for a life that ends by 75, before the worst effects of time sink in.

However, it seems that some people’s brains aren’t affected by the effects of time, and, even more amazing, they can perform just as well as people in their 20s. They are called “super-agers.” How is this phenomenon possible? Scientists went to find out.