Emily Rogalski had spent years studying superagers—people in their 80s and beyond whose memory rivals that of someone decades younger. But even she hesitated when a woman approached her after a presentation and introduced her 101-year-old mother with the proud declaration: “She’s still driving.”

Should someone over a century old really be behind the wheel? Rogalski wondered.

Then she met the woman: sharp, witty, a twinkle in her eye. “I would’ve gotten in the car with her,” Rogalski admits now. That moment reinforced everything her research suggested: Sometimes, aging can completely defy the odds.

“When we think about aging, we tend to focus on the negatives. We are very quick to dismiss older adults and not find value and look at them as an economic burden,” Rogalski says. But “there is a huge amount we can learn from these people, including the idea that not everything with aging is all doom and gloom.”

In her lab at the University of Chicago’s newly launched Healthy Aging & Alzheimer’s Research Care (HAARC) Center, Rogalski studies people at two extremes of aging: superagers, who seem to be resistant to cognitive decline, and people with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a neurodegenerative syndrome that makes them lose their ability to speak in middle age. Both groups are rare—PPA affects about 3 in 100,000 people, and only a small percentage of elderly adults meets the criteria to be dubbed superagers. But these outliers hold valuable lessons. Understanding what makes superagers resilient, Rogalski says, may help us understand why others are so vulnerable to cognitive decline.

Rogalski, the Rosalind Franklin PhD Professor of Neurology, never planned to study aging. But she has always been an advocate for overlooked perspectives.

Growing up she spent time helping her mother, who taught students with learning challenges. Rogalski became fascinated by what made the brains of these children—who were “so brilliant” but struggled to learn in the same ways as others—different. When she began a graduate program in neuroscience in the early 2000s, Rogalski intended to answer that question. But an unexpected assignment introduced her to another neglected group: patients with PPA.

Most people think of dementia as a slow unraveling of memory, but for those with PPA, the first thing to slip away is language skills. Words become elusive, sentences may fragment, and conversations grow frustratingly out of reach, even as memory and physical health stay intact.

“These individuals tended to be in their 50s and 60s,” Rogalski says. “This didn’t really fit with the outward facing view of dementia.”

Intrigued, Rogalski devoured the scant research on PPA—at the time, just two binders’ worth. Like children with learning challenges, these patients were understudied. She set out to change that. At Northwestern University—first as a graduate student and then as an early-career faculty member—she began following PPA patients from around the world, bringing them to her lab roughly once a year to track what was changing and how quickly.

When someone is diagnosed with PPA and asks their doctor how long they’ll be able to live a normal life, “the truthful answer is anywhere from two to 20 years,” says Rogalski. “We need to get better at identifying whose symptoms will progress more quickly and whose will progress slowly.”

By analyzing the brains of PPA patients who visited her lab, Rogalski found that some cases of PPA stem from the same molecular plaques and tangles that cause Alzheimer’s disease. But other cases, she discovered, are driven by entirely different proteins. These findings could eventually lead to new treatments for the disorder.

While her work with PPA was taking off, Rogalski also started to wonder what made some people so resistant to the effects of aging on the brain. Why did some people develop dementia at a young age while others remained quick-witted into their 80s and beyond?

Other scientists had studied the brains of healthy older people, but there was no standard definition of “successful aging.” Some researchers used this phrase to describe anyone living to age 100; others saw dementia-free 65-year-olds as archetypes of brain health.

In 2008 Rogalski penned her own definition of superagers: people over age 80 with memory performance at least as good as an average 50- to 60-year-old. She began trying to find people who met this criterion; less than 10 percent of the healthy people in their 80s and 90s who claimed that they had sharp memories scored high enough on cognitive tests to join her initial pilot studies.

Like the people with PPA whom Rogalski studies, the superagers visit the HAARC Center regularly for memory tests, brain scans, and physical exams. Recently Rogalski’s team has begun asking them to wear sensors that track their activity and sleep.

When Rogalski first analyzed the brains of superagers, a few things stood out: Compared to their peers, superagers experience far less brain shrinkage over time. In fact, scans revealed that one key region, the anterior cingulate, is thicker in superagers than in average middle-aged adults. This area, critical for attention and memory, may help explain why these individuals stay sharp while others falter.

But picking apart cause and effect is difficult, and brain structure alone doesn’t tell the full story. Rogalski’s research has uncovered another striking commonality among superagers: their social connections. While their diets, exercise habits, and lifestyles vary widely, most report having strong, engaged relationships. This aligns with broader research showing that loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline and suggests that deep, meaningful interactions may be vital to brain health.

Superagers also challenge the idea that a sharp mind is the result of an easy life. Many exhibit remarkable resilience and adaptability in the face of profound hardship. Rogalski believes this mental toughness may be another key to their longevity. By studying these exceptional individuals, she isn’t just learning how some people age well—she’s gathering clues that could one day help more of us do the same.

“We’ve gotten good, as a medical community, at extending lifespan, but our health span is not keeping up. … We’re still extending this period of unhealthiness at the end,” she says. Superagers “really represent that better balance between lifespan and health span. It would be great to have a future where more people achieve that.”