Derek Thompson

We're gonna get to your most recent study, your blockbuster study in just a few minutes, but just one more question here to sort of set the stage for this piece of research.

You have these tests that are measuring memory, and memory is kind of an external validity test.

It's how memory is presented in the world.

When we look inside of people's brains, especially the brains of older people who we know had Alzheimer's or dementia, or maybe just quote-unquote average memory loss,

What are we seeing?

Is it a loss of brain mass?

Is it shrinking of some parts of the brain?

What is happening physically to that organ that sits inside of our head as we're getting older that might account for declining memory as we age?

That's a huge, also the- And just to be clear, we don't know why either thing happens, right?

We don't understand where amyloid plaque is coming from necessarily.

And number two, we don't understand why some people might have lots of amyloid plaque in their brains, but they're immune to the kind of memory loss effects that distinguish Alzheimer's patients.

Well, I could have bronchitis.

I could have COVID.

So let's finally get to your most recent paper, which was just about everywhere in the news cycle.

You looked at variables that correlated with several hundred super-agers.

I think I read in the paper there were 290 participants that passed through this study in its 20-year history.

So 20-year history studying the brains of super-agers

To be clear, these are brains of deceased super agers.

We are looking at full naked brains in the lab and getting really, really close examinations of them.

What are you looking for?