A Very Senior Citizen

Being told that you have the mind of an 80-year-old may seem a dubious honor.But for Jeanne Calmert of Arles, France, that's a remarkable achievement.

In February Calmert celebrated her 120th birthday, making her the longest-lived human ever documented. Talk about successful aging: A neuropsychological checkup given when she was a youthful 118 shows that her mind remains sharp.

Calmert can now brag that she's the oldest person ever to endure a CT scan. Brain images revealed little deterioration of her frontal cortex, which helps plan, organize, and monitor behavior. That's not surprising, given that she lived alone in her second-story apartment—without an elevator-until she was 110.

There was marked atrophy, however, in several other cerebral areas. Karen Ritchie, M.D., who reported the results in the British Journal of Psychiatry (Vol. 166, No. 2), believes Calmert's superior brain power allows her to compensate for those losses.

The psychological exams brought more good news. Despite faltering eyesight and hearing, Calmert was alert and in good spirits. She performed admirably on a vocabulary test, and though she had a little trouble memorizing new information, her recall of family history was impressive. In most tests she performed within the normal range for folks in their eighties.

That Calmert is still mentally fit after all these years isn't as surprising as it might seem. Ritchie's prior studies suggest that the threat of senility diminishes, or at least stabilizes, once a person's age reaches three digits. The shortage of subjects, however, makes generalizations about life at Calmert's age impossible.

Except, quips Ritchie, that "the prevalence of senile dementia is zero."

PHOTO (COLOR): Senior Citizen