A superager is someone over 80 whose memory performs as well as a typical person in their 50s or 60s. While most people experience gradual memory decline as they age, superagers seem to resist this process, maintaining sharp recall well into their ninth decade and beyond. The term was coined by researchers at Northwestern University, and it now refers to a specific, testable category of cognitive performance, not just a vague impression of “aging well.”
How Superagers Are Identified
The definition isn’t subjective. To qualify as a superager in the Northwestern SuperAging Research Program, a person must be 80 or older and score at or above the average memory performance of adults aged 56 to 64 on a standardized word-recall test. In practice, this means hearing a list of 15 words and remembering at least 9 of them after a delay. That threshold sounds modest, but it’s well above what most 80-year-olds can achieve, and it places superagers in rare company.
Superagers also need to perform at or above the normal range for their own age group on other cognitive tests. In other words, their exceptional ability isn’t limited to one narrow skill. Their overall thinking and reasoning hold steady too.
Their Brains Look Physically Different
Brain imaging studies reveal that superagers aren’t just performing better on tests. Their brains are structurally distinct. In one key study, a region deep in the brain’s midline called the anterior cingulate cortex was actually thicker in superagers than in both typical older adults and middle-aged adults. That finding was unexpected: no one predicted that an 80-year-old’s brain would have a thicker cortex in any region than a 50-year-old’s.
The anterior cingulate cortex sits at a crossroads of several important functions, including memory, attention, decision-making, and motivation. Researchers believe this region may help protect memory circuits from the damage that accumulates with age. Overall brain volume in superagers was also significantly larger than in typical older adults, and statistically indistinguishable from middle-aged controls.
The rate of brain shrinkage tells a similar story. In a study that tracked brain volume over 18 months, typical older adults lost an average of 2.24% of brain volume per year. Superagers lost only 1.06%, less than half the rate. Their brains are physically aging more slowly.
A Rare Type of Brain Cell May Play a Role
At the microscopic level, superagers have unusually high densities of a specialized nerve cell found in the anterior cingulate cortex. These large, spindle-shaped neurons (called von Economo neurons) are found only in species with large brains and complex social behavior, including humans, great apes, elephants, and whales. They’re thought to support rapid, intuitive communication between distant brain regions.
Superagers have more of these neurons per unit of brain tissue than not only typical older adults and people with mild cognitive impairment, but even young, cognitively healthy people. The exact mechanism isn’t clear yet, but the pattern is striking: the people with the best memory in old age have the highest concentration of these cells, while people on the path toward Alzheimer’s disease have the lowest.
Lower Alzheimer’s-Related Protein Buildup
Two hallmark proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid plaques and tau tangles, tend to accumulate in the brain with age even in people who never develop dementia. But brain imaging of living superagers found no significant difference in plaque or tangle levels between superagers and younger healthy adults. Their brains appear to resist the protein buildup that characterizes normal aging, not just Alzheimer’s disease. This suggests superaging isn’t simply a matter of coping well despite brain changes. The damaging changes themselves seem to be reduced or delayed.
Genetics Offer Some Protection
A large genetic study of over 18,000 participants across eight research cohorts found that superagers carry a distinct genetic profile. They are significantly more likely to carry a gene variant called APOE-ε2, which is associated with lower Alzheimer’s risk. They are also far less likely to carry APOE-ε4, the variant most strongly linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Among white superagers in the study, carrying the protective ε2 variant was about 24 to 38% more common compared to control groups of various ages. The risk-associated ε4 variant was 45 to 63% less common. Among Black superagers, the protective pattern was even more pronounced when compared to people who had developed cognitive impairment. These genetic differences don’t fully explain superaging, since many superagers lack the protective variant and some carry the risky one, but the odds are meaningfully tilted in their favor.
Social Relationships Stand Out
When researchers at Northwestern gave superagers and age-matched controls a detailed psychological well-being questionnaire covering six dimensions of life satisfaction, the two groups scored similarly on five of the six. The one area where superagers scored significantly higher was positive social relationships: the quality and depth of their connections with other people.
This doesn’t prove that friendships prevent cognitive decline. It’s possible that people with better brain health are simply more capable of maintaining rich social lives. But the finding is consistent with a growing body of evidence that social engagement supports cognitive health in older adults, and it suggests that the quality of relationships matters more than the quantity.
Exercise Intensity and Mental Challenge
Superagers don’t appear to share a single lifestyle formula, but two patterns come up repeatedly in research: vigorous physical activity and a willingness to push through mental discomfort.
Some studies have found that people in their 80s who exercised at high intensity for 20 to 45 minutes a day maintained the aerobic capacity of someone 30 years younger. The key word is intensity. Moderate activity reduces health risks across the board, but high-intensity exercise, the kind where you can’t easily hold a conversation, appears to have a stronger effect on preserving brain regions involved in memory and reasoning. For someone just starting out, researchers suggest working up gradually from 50% of your maximum heart rate toward 70%, for 20 to 40 minutes, three to five days a week.
On the mental side, superagers tend to keep seeking out challenges that are genuinely difficult. Learning a new language, picking up a musical instrument, or mastering an unfamiliar skill all require sustained effort and a tolerance for frustration. Some researchers speculate that this willingness to sit with discomfort, rather than any particular activity, is what distinguishes superagers from people who stay casually active but avoid real difficulty.
What Superaging Is and Isn’t
Superaging is not simply living a long time, and it’s not the same as being generally healthy in old age. Plenty of 85-year-olds are physically fit but have noticeably declining memory. Superagers are specifically defined by their memory performance, which remains decades ahead of what’s expected for their age. The term describes a measurable cognitive outcome, not a lifestyle brand or a personality type.
That said, the research is still working out how much of superaging is genetic luck versus the accumulated effect of decades of choices. The honest answer is that it’s both. Some people appear biologically predisposed to resist brain aging, and some of the habits associated with superaging, like intense exercise and deep social bonds, are things anyone can pursue regardless of their genetic hand.