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Superagers show the memory capacity of people decades younger, challenging aging stereotypes.

Superager brains have twice as many immature neurons in the hippocampus as peers' brains do.

Intense, lifelong hobbies—“magnificent obsessions”—may help extend cognitive powers into old age.

Most of us would welcome the prospect of an extended lifespan. But while entertaining such a prospect, we should also add two important caveats: good health in general and the retention of cognitive longevity.

A small group of octogenarians—informally known as superagers—possess a memory capacity equal to that of younger adults. Typically, an 80-year-old in this group demonstrates the memory powers of someone in their 50s or 60s, along with normal or above-normal performance in other cognitive domains. Until recently, brain research didn’t offer much help in understanding such outliers and didn’t present any neuroscientific explanation of how an 86-year-old could perform as well in memory as someone almost half their age.

Until recently, cognitive decline was the prevailing leitmotif of our understanding of brain function in those 80 years of age or older. But in March, neuroscientists at the Northwestern University Mesulam Institute for Cognitive Neurology & Alzheimer’s Disease announced, after 25 years of studying superagers, the discovery of a “resilience signature” based on postmortem studies. They concentrated on hippocampal tissue in 38 individuals drawn from five groups: healthy young adults, older adults without impaired cognitive functioning, older adults with mild or early dementia, older adults diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and finally, superagers. Superagers possessed about twice the number of immature neurons, which retained the........

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