Research Focus
Aging & Brain Health Alzheimer's & Related Dementias Cognitive Neuroscience
My research program answers two questions: how are memory and attention affected by healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and what can we do to help maintain brain health and reduce dementia risk among older adults? To answer the first question, I am studying how feelings of familiarity and the ability to inhibit irrelevant information are affected by aging and MCI, and how early life trauma (e.g., the Holocaust) affects people’s memory for their childhood. These studies advance our understanding not only of normal cognitive aging and MCI, but also more fundamentally of how memory and attention work. To address the second aim, I am running interventions involving exercise, nutrition, cognitive training, and cognitive and social engagement with colleagues in the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA; ccna-ccnv.ca). Many of these interventions will move into the new Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness, where I am Associative Scientific Director. We aim to discover how these interventions affect cognitive functioning and brain health to reduce the risk of dementia.
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Research Technologies
Intervention researchPatient-based researchfMRI