Getting on in years has arguably always been a puzzle. There's the 82-year-old part-time farmer down the road who remains light on his feet and a repository of repartee while his 60-something accountant neighbour gets short of breath walking from car to office.
According to a team of scientists at Vanderbilt University, such "super agers" could have an innate advantage over the prematurely old, at least when it comes to cognition.
According to the university, those in their 80s with brain function "comparable to people 20 or 30 years younger" are much less likely to carry the dreaded APOE-ε4