RESEARCH led by UNSW Sydney's Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing has highlighted the need for clarity when defining late-life cognitively high performers, which could ultimately inform strategies to help prevent the development of dementia.
Currently, there isn't a consistent approach to measuring cognitive super-ageing, stated UNSW.
Super-ageing refers to the elite group of individuals who maintained varying degrees of midlife levels of capability and activity into very late life.
A 'cognitive super-ager' is deemed to demonstrate higher levels of intellectual activity than their more cognitively average peers.
Super-agers have been shown to have healthier lifestyles, less diabetes, and, from a genetic standpoint, have lower rates of the protein associated with Alzheimer's disease.
Imaging of the brains of super-agers also shows less brain atrophy, greater white matter integrity and differences in functional connectivity.
However, how super-ageing is best defined and how exactly it differs from usual or normal ageing remain unanswered.
Most studies consider super-ageing based on memory performance that is equivalent or comparable to that of a younger adult range, but very few examine other aspects of cognition or the maintenance of high-level abilities over time.
The review, published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, comprises a systematic literature search of 44 studies across five major research databases from their inception until Jul 2023.
It aimed to evaluate the literature identifying older adults with exceptional cognitive performance with an emphasis on how super-ageing is defined, and the key clinical features that sets them apart.
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