A Dutch woman who was the oldest person in the world when she died at age 115 in 2005 appeared sharp right up to the end, joking that pickled herring was the secret to her longevity.

Scientists say that Henrikje van Andel-Schipper’s mind was probably as good as it seemed: a post-mortem analysis of her brain revealed few signs of Alzheimer’s or other diseases commonly associated with a decline in mental ability in old age.

That came as something of a surprise, said Gert Holstege, a professor at Groningen University, whose findings will be published in the August edition of Neurobiology of Aging.

A 2-year-old boy in England suffers from a rare genetic disease sometimes referred to as children’s Alzheimer’s disease, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Taylor Smith, of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, England, has been diagnosed with Niemann-Pick disease, type C, a disease that will cause him to develop signs of dementia before he hits his teen years.

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Having a big belly in your 40s can boost your risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia decades later, a new study suggests.

While previous research has found evidence that obesity in middle age raises the chances of developing dementia later, the new work found a separate risk from storing a lot of fat in the abdomen. Even people who weren’t overweight were susceptible.