We are writers reading the research here, not clinicians, psychologists, or neurologists. What follows is reflection on studies of how minds age, most of them observational, which means they describe patterns across large groups rather than predictions about any one reader’s mind. Averages are not prescriptions.
A large study published in 2025 upended a comfortable assumption. Formal education, it found, raises where your mind starts but does little to change how fast it falls.
The study, from Anders Fjell, Ole Rogeberg and colleagues, pooled long-term data from more than 170,000 people over 50 across 33 Western countries. Their conclusion was blunt. “However, education did not protect against age-related decline”, they wrote. The journal’s own summary kept the careful wording: education was “linked to better memory and larger brain volumes but not to slower cognitive or brain decline with age”, most likely reflecting early-life advantages rather than any protection during ageing.
This is one study, large and international but still one, and the authors note that education’s role in ageing is fiercely debated. They also stress it carries many benefits. The point is narrower than “school doesn’t matter” — the degree earned at twenty isn’t the thing keeping your reasoning sharp at seventy-five.
Let’s start with a fact that dents the story of inevitable decline. Scientific American, summarising the research, put it plainly: “Contrary to stereotypes of the doddering elderly, research shows that half of people older than age 70 stay mentally sharp.” Treat “half” as a rounded figure rather than a precise number, but the direction is clear. Steep decline is common but not universal.
The sharpest end of that group has a name. At Northwestern’s SuperAging Program, researchers have spent 25 years studying adults over 80 whose memory matches people two or three decades younger. What sets them apart is the interesting part, and it isn’t raw intelligence.
Emily Rogalski, a University of Chicago neurology professor and one of the world’s leading experts on SuperAgers, has been careful on that point. “It’s important to point out when we compare the SuperAgers to the average agers, they have similar levels of IQ,” she said, “so the differences we’re seeing are not just due to intelligence.”
Where SuperAgers do stand out is more mundane than a genetic gift.The consistent behavioural thread is sociability — Northwestern describes them as highly social, with strong interpersonal relationships. Rogalski also suggests another habit that matters is finding activities that are enjoyable but also challenging. She is quick to add there is no single recipe, though.
The social finding lines up with something much older and much larger. Harvard’s Study of Adult Development, running since 1938, has followed thousands of lives through their entire arc. Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Dealth, has been direct about where the data points: broader social networks and more social activity, the study reports, are associated with later onset and slower rates of cognitive decline.
Two different research programmes, working on different populations, keep landing on the same general finding. What appears to matter most, and what almost anyone can act on, is who you spend time with and how often.
Rogalski’s second suggestion, about doing things that are enjoyable but also challenging, perhaps sits alongside this rather than replacing it. A real conversation with a person you love is itself the kind of activity her test describes: you don’t know what they’ll say next, your brain has to work to answer, and the emotional weight of it matters.
None of this proves that maintaining relationships will place you in the sharp half at eighty. The studies show links, not causes, and the SuperAgers may simply have brains that make it easier for them to stay connected. What the evidence suggests is still useful, though. The credential on the wall probably isn’t what does the ongoing work; the phone call you keep meaning to make, the friend you haven’t seen in months, the harder-than-it-should-be conversation with someone who matters — those, on the best evidence available, might be.
If any of this stirs worry about your own memory or a family member’s, that is worth taking to a qualified doctor rather than a magazine article. These patterns describe groups, not the person reading them.
