Our decade-long partnership with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) includes co-sponsoring the Research Partnership in Cognitive Aging and three Cognitive Aging Summits with the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The successful partnership has expanded our understanding of how people think as they age.

In 2021, we renewed this longstanding partnership with the NIA through the Foundation for NIH for a third five-year cycle to establish a network to identify, evaluate, track and conduct research across multiple sites on older adults with superior cognitive performance for their age. Although these “cognitive super agers” are believed to constitute a very small minority of older individuals, they represent an unparalleled resource in which to study the behavioral, environmental, health, neural and genetic profiles that lead to sustained cognitive and brain function in advanced age. Conducted over a five-year period, this research is expected to reveal important information about the factors that are critical for maintenance of cognitive function, as well as the factors that do not figure prominently.