SMRs and AMRs

Friday, May 22, 2009

At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age

By BENEDICT CAREY
NYT

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. — The ladies in the card room are playing bridge, and at their age the game is no hobby. It is a way of life, a daily comfort and challenge, the last communal campfire before all goes dark.

“We play for blood,” says Ruth Cummins, 92, before taking a sip of Red Bull at a recent game.

“It’s what keeps us going,” adds Georgia Scott, 99. “It’s where our closest friends are.”

In recent years scientists have become intensely interested in what could be called a super memory club — the fewer than one in 200 of us who, like Ms. Scott and Ms. Cummins, have lived past 90 without a trace of dementia. It is a group that, for the first time, is large enough to provide a glimpse into the lucid brain at the furthest reach of human life, and to help researchers tease apart what, exactly, is essential in preserving mental sharpness to the end.

(More here.)

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