Clinical / translational research

Maintaining the health and function of the aging brain is crucial to improving the quality of older people’s lives and reducing societal burden. Aging is often accompanied by a decline in memory for life events (episodic memory), especially in those at risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Yet some at-risk individuals manage to maintain memory function, which raises important questions about the brain mechanisms that underly memory resilience.

Resilience to Alzheimer’s disease describes those rare individuals who exhibit normal cognitive function while harboring a high disease burden. Better understanding of the mechanisms that confer protection against cognitive decline despite high-level AD pathology offers potential therapeutic insights for preventing dementia in AD. Recent advances in the field provide a unique opportunity to explore the spatial distribution of molecules in the human brain at an unprecedented level of detail.

The Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience will host a "lab meeting style" seminar series to bring together awardees, affiliated professors, and students. Two speakers will discuss their brain resilience research, field experience, and answer questions about their work.

The science to advance our understanding of the aging process—and to potentially slow it down—has made important strides. One of the leading scientists responsible for this work is Professor Tony Wyss-Coray, whose work has focused on brain aging.