Ralph Rehbock, 91 and survivor of the Holocaust, has a full schedule. On the first Friday of each month, he gathers with a group of older men in a synagogue on the outskirts of Chicago for a honey meeting: Men Enjoying Leisure (men taking advantage of leisure).
Every Friday afternoon, he features classics from the 1930s and 1940s with the Meltones, the club’s singing group. And over the years, he has shared his Nazi German escape history with thousands of students through his work at Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.
Leigh Steinman, 82, spends much of her time working on artistic projects with children living in her neighborhood in Chicago and watching Cubs games at Wrigley Field, which is just one block away.
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Steinman worked at the stadium as a security guard for 17 years before retiring at the beginning of the pandemic (his previous career was as advertising editor). But he still goes to the stadium three or four times a week during the summer to see former workmates and other fans.
Rehbock and Steinman are considered “super-eados”, people 80 or older who have the same memory capacity as someone 20 to 30 years younger. Northwestern University scientists have been studying this remarkable group since 2000, hoping to find out how they avoided the typical cognitive decline, as well as more serious memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. A new review article published on Thursday summarizes a quarter of the century of discoveries.
The super-eads are a diverse group; They do not share a magic diet, exercise regime or medication. But one thing that unites them is “how they see the importance of social relations,” said Sandra Weintraub, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, who has participated in the research from the beginning. “And in personality, they tend to be more outgoing.”
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This is not surprising Ben Rein, a neuroscientist and author of the book that will be released soon, “Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection” (why brains need friends: the neuroscience of social connection).
“People who socialize more are more resistant to cognitive decline as they get older,” Rein said. And, he added, they “usually have larger brains.”
Researchers believe this may be because socializing helps to protect against the reduction of brain volume that occurs with age and isolation. Solitude, particularly common in the elderly, can increase stress hormone levels, cortisol, and if cortisol remains high for long periods, it can lead to chronic inflammation. This, in turn, can damage brain cells and even increase the risk of dementia.
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By being more social in old age, super-easts can avoid part of this atrophy. An analysis included in the new article confirms this: the brain volume of super-eads tends to be more like that of 50 and 60-year-olds than their octogenarian and nonagenarian peers.
Another remarkable difference is that the brains of super-eads tend to have more than one special type of cell, called von economy neurons, which are considered important for social behaviors and are only found in highly social mammals-that is, monkeys, elephants, whales and humans.
All of these von economy neurons “probably help them build and maintain powerful social connections and strong social networks,” said Dr. Bill Seeley, professor of neurology and pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. And this can have “a long-range effect on your general well-being and health.”
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But, Seley added, this is probably just a “series of neurobiological advantages that keep them in such a good form at this stage of life.”
For example, almost all octogenaries have signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains (regardless of whether they have the condition), but some super educated have little or no signal. In addition, in the brains of the super-eads, the functioning of an important neurochemical for attention and memory is better preserved.
Dr. Sofiya Milman, Professor of Medicine and Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, studies healthy centenaries. She said they also tend to be outgoing and “have a positive view of life.”
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There is, however, a dilemma of “egg and chicken”. A person with better cognitive functioning may be more willing to leave and socialize compared to someone who feels that his memory is declining. “If it is socialization that leads to the maintenance of a better cognition, or if it is the best cognition that leads to more socialization, I think this is still under discussion,” said Milman.
Unfortunately, forcing yourself to be more social will probably not be enough to turn it into a super-worker. Weintraub said that the extraordinary ability of the super-eads is probably due to genetics and biology, besides behaviors.
But for Steinman, the importance of seeing their neighbors and friends at the stadium is clear. “I think the sociability of Wrigley Field and where I live, my block, is what kept me going so far,” he said.
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