Aging

A study co-authored by Prof. Amy Finkelstein found that seniors are not only living longer, but also living relatively healthier lives for longer periods of time,, writes Forbes’ Howard Gleckman. “As a result, while older adults still need personal care and other supports, they can put off this assistance for years,” notes Gleckman. “Or to put it another way, additional years in old age, even very old age, are on average healthy ones. They do not result in extra years of serious illness and care needs.”  

MIT researchers have developed an AI-powered robotic therapy system that combines wearable force sensors and camera recordings of physical therapists’ movements to provide personalized therapy to patients, writes Newsweek’s Claudia Tanner. “Robotic assistance will allow patients to practice exercises more often while still receiving support tailored to their abilities,” says Johannes Lachner, who completed this work as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. “Our goal is to take a step toward more accessible and personalized physical rehabilitation, giving more patients the opportunity to regain movement and independence.” 

MIT researchers found that unless an individual is affected by stroke or dementia, their ability to process language does not decline with age, writes Health Day’s Dennis Thompson. “Scans show that activity in the brain’s language processing network is nearly identical among seniors to that found in younger adults,” writes Thompson. “These results indicate that parts of the brain dedicated to unique functions like language might be less prone to age-related decline than general-purpose networks that contribute to many different skills.”  

Writing for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, Director of the MIT AgeLab, describes the importance of considering home security beyond simple intrusion protection in longevity planning. “A longevity-ready home to age-in-place isn't simply a safer, more accessible home,” writes Coughlin. “It is a home surrounded by an architecture of people, technology, and services that can detect, communicate, and respond even when we, or the people who care about us, cannot.” 

MIT researchers have found that lower birth rates are associated with higher growth in Gross Domestic Product globally, writes The Atlantic’s Idrees Kahloon. “[P]erhaps more important than the observed correlation is the authors’ proposed explanation: that when prime-age workers become scarce, companies adapt by developing productivity-boosting technology,” notes Kahloon.  

MIT researchers found that contrary to popular assumptions, lower birth rates have raised rather than lowered the Gross Domestic Product globally, writes The Dispatch’s Eli Kronenberg. “Across the board, we found that these lower birth rates were leading to a faster pace of technological adoption and progress,” says graduate student Keelan Beirne, a co-author on the paper. 

Researchers from the Media Lab developed MemPal, a wearable camera that creates a real-time automated text diary of actions and conversations to help older adults locate objects and provide reminders, writes WBUR’s Mike Kalin. “A small study conducted last year by researchers at the MIT Media Lab confirmed improved performance of object finding among users and an overall positive perception of the system. Tools like MemPal could be essential as cases of dementia continue to proliferate,” writes Kalin.  

Mel Robbins visits the MIT AgeLab and tries out the lab’s Age Gain Now Empathy System (AGNES) suit, which is designed to help wearers experience the challenges associated with aging. “When we think about aging, most people don’t really have a definition of it. They think about it as a number of birthdays—that's older,” says Joseph Coughlin, AgeLab director. “Actually, aging is about diminishing capacity over time. So weightlifting is increasing your capacity—you're pushing out the clock. Learning something new keeps you cognitively well.” 

In a Forbes opinion piece, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, emphasizes the importance of place planning, which includes factoring climate risks in retirement decisions, and considering whether a community will work for an individual in the future. “If where we live increasingly shapes our health, mobility, access to care, social connection, and resilience, then retirement planning needs another dimension beyond financial preparedness,” writes Coughlin. “It is no longer simply, ‘Is this where I want to grow old?’ It is, ‘Will this place continue to support me as I grow older?’"

For The Hill, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen and contributor Mark Iwry argue that the U.S. should implement federal legislation for automatic retirement savings plans. “Without burdening small employers, bipartisan auto-IRA legislation would make retirement saving easy for employees without an IRA or retirement plan at work,” write Pozen and Iwry. “Such legislation would extend tax-favored retirement savings to the tens of millions of workers now left behind, fulfilling the stated intent of the recent executive order ‘to ensure that every American worker has access to a simple, portable, low-cost retirement-savings option.’”

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, joins NBC News Now hosts Kate Snow and Zinhle Essamuah to discuss how Americans can prepare for retirement, reviewing several questions that can help individuals prepare for a longer life. “Most of us start thinking about retirement as somewhere between health and wealth, and that’s not incorrect, but it’s incomplete,” says Coughlin.  

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, speaks with NPR’s Allison Aubrey about his team’s work developing the Longevity Preparedness Index, which is aimed at helping people create a comprehensive plan for aging. “We want to look at all those big and little things that we take for granted in life," Coughlin says. "We may expect things won't change, but when a big life transition comes along — whether it's retiring from a profession, a death or unexpected sickness — many people have unintentionally ignored some of the very decisions that could help us thrive.” 

In an article for The Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti writes about his group’s new research that “reveals that those over the age of 66 have more encounters with a broader cross-section of society than younger, working-age groups.” Ratti adds: “Armed with data that shows retirement expands opportunities for social interaction, cities could be designed to support this more deliberately. Retirement communities could be woven into student neighborhoods, for example, allowing knowledge to circulate across generations. Public spaces could be optimized to encourage everyday mixing.”

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Clare Ansberry about how the baby boomers are shaping and transforming the future of aging. “They are reinventing old age,” he notes. Coughlin adds: “If you don’t have expectations of getting better, then you simply become satisfied with what is.”