Sister Mary, a Catholic nun who belonged to the School Sisters of Notre Dame and died at 101 with her memory and reasoning fully intact, was one of 678 nuns enrolled in a 30-year study of brain aging

Sister Mary should not, by any reasonable interpretation of late-20th-century Alzheimer’s neuropathology, have been able to teach seventh and eighth grades for 42 years, to continue part-time teaching work until age 84, and to perform “remarkably well” on Snowdon’s standardised cognitive battery just months before her death in 1993 at the age of 101 — […] Sister Mary should not, by any reasonable interpretation of late-20th-century Alzheimer’s neuropathology, have been able to teach seventh and eighth grades for 42 years, to continue part-time teaching work until age 84, and to perform “remarkably wel... [7360 chars]