Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital are hot on the trail of elderly “super-agers” – whose sharp memories avoid typical age-related declines – in an attempt to study whether there are interventions that can improve prospects for the rest of us. Assistant Professor of Neurology Alexandra Touroutoglou, director of imaging operations at MGH’s Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, and colleagues have conducted several studies on the subject. In the summer of 2021, they published results that tracked one root of super-agers’ performance to a brain region responsible for visual processing, using functional MRI to watch the visual cortex in real time. Besides Touroutoglou, the group included Bradford Dickerson, director of the Frontotemporal Disorders Unit; Lisa Feldman-Barrett, a senior investigator in psychiatry; Joseph Andreano, an instructor in psychiatry; and Yuta Katsumi, an instructor in neurology. Touroutoglou spoke to the Gazette about the latest advances and a new study getting underway to test whether a neurostimulation intervention can restore function in those experiencing age-related decline. This interview was edited for clarity and length…
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