Aging

Senior Research Scientist Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab discusses generational differences in aging and achieving life milestones for a Fortune article by reporter Nick Lichtenberg. Currently, “we’re creating new life stages, or we’re extending life stages that used to be done in short order,” says Coughlin. “The real generation gap is about expectations. Not only do [generations] expect to live longer, but they expect to live better.” 

Washington Post reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha spotlights Prof. Pattie Maes’ research at the intersection of AI and memory, including her wearable AI devices designed to assist older adults that “capture pieces of everyday experience and make them retrievable later.” Maes’ research “takes on particular urgency for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, diseases defined by memory loss that can rob a person’s ability to navigate everyday life independently,” writes Eunjung Cha.  

Using a technique based on Raman microscopy, MIT researchers have found a way to detect senescent cells, “zombie cells” that accumulate as tissues age, without destroying them, writes reporter Eric Ralls for Earth.com. “If the approach eventually works in living people, researchers could gain a way to track senescent cells over time without repeatedly removing tissue,” notes Ralls. “That could help scientists understand how these cells contribute to aging and whether treatments designed to eliminate them are working.” 

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.