Successful Aging and the Humility of Perspective

For anyone familiar with Indiana only from a distance, Turkey Run State Park is an anomaly. In a state equated with flat rural farmland, a visitor does not expect to find an old growth forest and sandstone gorges embedded with prehistoric sea creatures. Yet, when one takes the perspective of geologic time and glacial forces, the incongruous topography makes more sense. A few hundred million years ago, central Indiana was a rainforest at the mouth of an ancient river emptying into an ancient ocean. Time and experience can change our expectations and broaden our perspective. We invited 100 scientists to Turkey Run State Park for the Eighth Biennial Regenstrief Conference to enrich our perspective on successful aging.

The Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, originally designed these conferences as retreats. The program challenges attendees to examine their assumptions through oral presentations, informal social discussions, and reflective walks with colleagues along primordial trails. The papers in this supplement represent the oral presentations delivered at the conference and are infused with the spirit of discourse at the retreat. We planned this conference with an ambitious agenda to examine past research on successful aging, identify the edge of the water in this research, and map the most promising pathways for moving forward. To facilitate the possibility that participants might achieve a new perspective, we assembled a group of scientists whose paths typically do not cross: They work in separate laboratories using different methods and publish in disparate journals.

One key, albeit risky, goal of this conference was to facilitate the intermingling of these diverse scientists so they …