Derek Thompson

In what she called the most surprising finding of her paper, the anterior cingulate region of superager brains had greater cortical thickness.

This matters because the anterior cingulate region is the part of the brain critical for, among other things, socializing.

One possibility is that people who are genetically predisposed to have healthier parts of the brain socialize more and also have better memory.

But another possibility that I think is too interesting to ignore here is that it is social connection itself.

It's socializing itself that helps to maintain cortical thickness.

That is, just as doing like bicep curls strengthens your arms as you get old, deep socializing, deep relationships,

Hanging out with friends strengthens the part of our brains that are responsible for memory retention as we age.

This is not the first paper to suggest that friendships and relationships are the key to healthy aging.

Several years ago, in one of my favorite episodes, Robert Waldinger and Mark Scholes of the longitudinal Harvard study of happiness said the key to a long, happy life was relationships.

I think some people resist findings like these.

They think they're touchy-feely.

They want the elixir of life to exist in a pill or an injectable to be described at the level of precise molecular description and mechanism.

But to me, it makes perfect sense that social fitness would help the social animal as it ages.

As listeners and readers know, one of the themes I'm most interested in are the ironic ways that modern life conspires to pull us away from each other in this antisocial century.

And I am always on the lookout for people and scientists and ideas that explain how we should think more deliberately about socializing as a part of healthy living.

Today's guest is Sandra Weintraub.

And we talk about her research, the science of super aging, the science of memory and the brain, and why she thinks maybe we should begin to talk about friends and relationships as being a matter of brain health itself.

I'm Derek Thompson.

This is Plain English.

Dr. Weintraub, welcome to the show.