‘Super-agers’ reveal how to stay sharp as you get older
CBC
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Morry Kernerman, an accomplished violin prodigy, commits YouTube recordings of classical music to memory, hikes in a hilly ravine with his son and volunteers to teach music in South America.
As he prepares to celebrate his 101st birthday next week, Kernerman is convinced that music has played an outsized role in contributing to his long and active life.
The Toronto resident is what’s known as a super-ager, someone 80 or up who retains the memory abilities of those in their 40s or 50s. The SuperAging Research Initiative is studying such participants across North America, trying to find out what helps them stay so sharp and avoid the physical and mental decline that typically comes with advanced age.
In Canada, Angela Roberts of Western University in London, Ont., is leading the national initiative. Their goal is to enrol 500 super-agers into the project across the U.S. and Canada, which Roberts says they’re close to doing.
Though the results are observational, Roberts and the international team have so far found three key factors that help people live independently and for longer: pursue meaningful hobbies, stay physically active and maintain social connections.
The SuperAging Research Initiative that Roberts’ research is part of is led by a team from Northwestern University in Chicago. They’ve published a study suggesting the brains of 24 super-agers diminish at a slower rate than the brains of 12 similarly aged people, based on MRI scans of brain areas associated with memory and focus, as well as post-mortem measures.
"They are people who have beat the curve, so to speak, of what we expect in typical aging and their biology matches that," Roberts said. "In fact, their brains do not shrink back as quickly as what we see in typical populations."
The super-agers don't seem to experience thinning of the cortex, which affects memory, behaviour and how we're able to move, she said.
Most previous studies that have looked at people who age well have relied on self-reported questionnaires that might be given once a year, asking the individual to recall what they've done.
What sets this research program apart is how they’re collecting the data, following participants for decades with blood tests, brain scans, physical activity monitors and word recall tests to start to answer how to live longer and well.
SuperAgers view themselves as contributing to society, which Roberts called one of the special ingredients helping them.
For Kerneman, his career as a violinist started at the age of 10 back in 1936. He recalls giving a debut recital to newspaper critics in Toronto later that year. He opened with a sonata by Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli followed by some Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.
The critics all gave good reviews, Kernerman said, qualified with three words: "considering his age."
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