SuperAgers and Computers- Arguments about Memory Capacity

     Who says elderly folks have terrible memories? In some cases, the elderly may have even better memories than 50 and 60 year olds! When most people think of Alzheimer’s they think of only elderly people suffering from this disease; however, younger people may suffer from it as well (this is known as early onset Alzheimer’s). However, instead of deteriorating memories, some elderly people show no sign of deterioration and, indeed, have better memories than younger adults. These people are known as “SuperAgers”, and they are discussed in Tamar Gefen’s lecture and the article, "Morphometric and Histologic Substrates of Cingulate Integrity in Elders with Exceptional Memory Capacity", written by Tamar Gefen, Melanie Peterson, Steven T. Papastefan, Adam Martersteck, Kristen Whitney, Alfred Rademaker, Eileen H. Bigio, Sandra Weintraub, Emily Rogalski, M.-Marsel Mesulam, and Changiz Geula. This article discusses the fact that there are a fair amount of elderly people who still maintain the memories of 20 year olds. In normal 60 year olds there is evidence of normal age-related decline in memory functioning; nevertheless, this is not enough to warrant them demented. Gefen discusses Alzheimer’s and how it is an impairment in memory functioning and the people who suffer from this have very poor memories and have trouble in day-to-day functioning. SuperAgers, on the other hand, defy typical trajectories in aging over 80 and show simply outstanding memory performance. In her lecture, Gefen provided an example of Jeanne Calment, a woman who lived to be 122. She described that even though Jeanne enjoyed smoking cigarettes, she was in perfect health and only quit smoking when she couldn’t see well enough to light her own cigarettes. In the experiment described by Gefen, healthy 80 and 50 year olds were gathered and their cortical thicknesses examined. When compared, the 80 year olds showed a lot more atrophy. This finding makes sense because older people tend to have more degeneration than younger adults. When the researchers compared 80- year old SuperAgers, they saw that the 80 year olds compared to the SuperAgers showed much more thinning. The interesting part of this study shows itself when the 80 year old SuperAgers were compared to the normal 50 and 60 year olds. There was relatively no difference between the two groups; in fact, the brains of the SuperAgers showed even more Anterior Cingulate Cortex thickness than the 50 and 60 year olds. This suggests that there is some type of anatomical feature associated with SuperAging and the increased thickness has to do with the neurobiological signature of these SuperAgers.

      A similar article called “Forget about forgetting: Elderly know more, use it better” discusses memory and how our cognitive abilities change as we age. An example of a computer was used in describing declining cognitive abilities in which if the computer was only allowed to read a certain small amount each day, the computer’s performance or “cognitive ability” resembled only a child. However, when the computer was allowed to read and absorb more information, its performance resembled an older adult because it was allowed to accumulate more information. Interestingly, because there was more information to absorb and process, the computer’s functioning became slower due to the sheer amount of information present in the database. The computer’s processing ability did not decline; rather, “increased ‘experience’ had caused the computer's database to grow, giving it more data to process- which takes time”. This article also discusses why it is more difficult for older people than younger people to recall names. This is because there is more variety of names present today than there was years ago and this makes recalling a name in an already packed memory far more difficult. In this article the researchers provide explanations for why the brains of older people seem slower at processing information as well as more forgetful in general than the brains of younger people. Michael Ramscar argues that instead of elderly memory declining, the cognitive tests used to assess memory are intrinsically flawed and therefore assume that elderly people simply have degenerating memories. An example of such a test is “paired-associate learning” in which young and old must connect words such as “up” to “down” or “necktie” to “cracker” in memory. The research reveals that younger adults do better when attempting to pair “up” with “down” because they appear more frequently together than “necktie” and “cracker”. However, young adults notice less than older adults when words do not go together and this, according to Ramscar, shows older adults’ superior understanding of language. The main point of this article states that “the brains of older people do not get weak… on the contrary, they simply know more”. So, just like the computer example in the beginning of the article, older folks simply have more information to process than younger folks, and this requires more time.
     
     These two articles, "Morphometric and Histologic Substrates of Cingulate Integrity in Elders with Exceptional Memory Capacity" and “Forget about forgetting: Elderly know more, use it better” relate to one another in the fact that they both discuss memory capacities but utilize different methods of doing so. Tamar Gefen's article specifies that the reason SuperAgers have amazing memory capacity is because of a neurobiological signature, and this signature is not present in the brains of those suffering from Alzheimer's. Michael Ramscar's article specifies that the elderly do not have slowly deteriorating memories; in fact, their memories are only not as sharp as those of younger people because they have more experiences, memories, and information in their minds causing slower processing (just like a computer). 

Sources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140120090415.htm

https://luc.app.box.com/v/neuroscienceseminar/1/5783522273/49078412269/1

http://www.google.com/search?q=superagers&safe=strict&nord=1&biw=1366&bih=643&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJvavs6rnMAhUruoMKHc_zDLsQ_AUIDCgA#imgrc=roZ5UtJ83nja0M%3A

http://www.google.com/search?q=superagers&safe=strict&nord=1&biw=1366&bih=643&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJvavs6rnMAhUruoMKHc_zDLsQ_AUIDCgA#safe=strict&nord=1&tbm=isch&q=anterior+cingulate+cortex&imgrc=OJ5HKbkind5aSM%3A

Gefen, T., Peterson, M., Papastefan, S. T., Martersteck, A., Whitney, K., Rademaker, A., . . . Geula, C. (2015). Morphometric and Histologic Substrates of Cingulate Integrity in Elders with Exceptional Memory Capacity. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(4), 1781-1791. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.2998-14.2015