Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Cognitive superagers

Publication |
2020

Abstract

People aged 80 and older are called superagers if they have the episodic memory of an average sexagenarian and performing at or above 1 SD average performance for age and education on non-memory measures according to published norms. It is a captivating construct from the scientific point of view, that is a counterpart of age-related cognitive decline.

The estimation of the prevalence of this phenomenon is 12 % between cognitively healthy older adults in the Czech Republic. Prevalence of amyloid β+ and APOE ε4 is equivalent between SA and non-SA, however SA have larger grey matter volume especially in hippocampus.

Grey matter volume is associated with white matter (WM) integrity through vascular health status. Intervention targeted to vascular healthy status or to inflammation in WM may help to decrease the prevalence of cognitive impairment and increase the prevalence of superagers.