A National Institute on Aging-designated Alzheimer's Disease Center
Even in retirement, Julius Hayes keeps himself busy, staying involved in his community and coaching high school baseball. But, year after year, he makes sure his schedule is clear for his annual ABC Study visit. A six-year participant, Hayes said he’s keeping the promise he made in 2013.
“It’s kind of like a social thing that I feel like I have to do to help in a small way,” he said.
Dear Caregivers,
We hear about the challenges you face every day as you place the needs of your loved one above your own. The Penn Memory Center wants to put you first with a free day of relaxation and self-care as a part of its 3rd annual Caregiver Retreat. The retreat will take place Saturday, November 2, 2019, at Ralston House Wellness Center from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm.
Treat yourself to a day of yoga, massages, meditation, creative art projects, and more. Lunch, coffee and snacks will be provided.
Parking is available on a first-come, first-served basis in the Ralston House parking lot (entrance on Ludlow Street), on Chestnut Street (metered parking) or in the parking garage at 34th and Ludlow streets.
You can RSVP to Alison Lynn at 215-360-0257 or alison.lynn@uphs.upenn.edu
Jordan Weiss, a PhD candidate in Demography and Sociology and a Penn Memory Center Scholar, received an award from the American Public Health Association (APHA) for his work examining recent trends in dementia and its risk factors.
The Laurence G. Branch Doctoral Student Research Award is an award which honors outstanding students for exceptional research during their training. Students must have completed a research project in areas of gerontology, aging and chronic illness and disability in adults, long-term care, or geriatrics.
Jordan will be recognized for his achievement during the APHA’s Aging and Public Health Section Awards Ceremony in November.
PMC’s Dr. Laura Wisse is flanked by Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Valley Chapter Executive Director Kristina Fransel and Dr. Rebecca Edelmayer, Alzheimer’s Association Director of Scientific Engagement after receiving a research grant award.
Former Penn Memory Center Scholar Laura Wisse, PhD, recently left the University of Pennsylvania to pursue an assistant professorship at Lund University in Sweden.
Dr. Wisse first came to the Penn Memory Center in 2014 for a post-doctoral fellowship after earning a PhD in Neuroscience and MSc in Epidemiology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands in 2014 and an MSc in Psychology from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2010.
She brought to Philadelphia a keen interest in aging brains and the mind, sparked from her time working in a nursing home while in high school. Part of her duties was to help out with a daycare program for the people at the home with cognitive decline and dementia. Her hours were spent feeding, playing games and music with residents, and sometimes even painting their nails.
The Penn Program for Mindfulness is offering a six-week Mindful Writing course from October 16 – November 20. The classes will be held at 3930 Chestnut Street, University City, Philadelphia.
The course aims to create a space for creativity through both meditation and writing, building positive writing habits, all in pursuit of allowing you to discover the stories you want to tell. The course will be taught by the author Susan Barr-Toman, author of the novel “When Love Was Clean Underwear”. A Pushcart nominee, her work has appeared in Purple Clover, Manifest-Station, Philadelphia Stories, Watershed Review, and r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal among others.
All writing will be done by hand so attendees need to bring a pen or pencil and some paper along with them to the course. The registration deadline is October 9th and the course fee is $325.
Penn Memory Center Scholar Shana Stites, PsyD, MA, MS was a featured guest on a recent episode of Dementia Matters, hosted by Dr. Nathaniel Chin of the University of Wisconsin. On the show, Dr. Stites discussed her work with the stigma surrounding Alzheimer’s disease and the role disclosure can have on perpetuating or fighting it.
Stigma can come from both internal and external sources, she explained, based on our perceptions of how a person with Alzheimer’s disease is supposed to act, what they’re supposed to look like, and how those perceptions meet with reality.
In Dr. Stites’ work on the subject, she found that people who believed more strongly that Alzheimer’s disease is a mental illness tended to “over-interpret” symptoms presented to them in a fictional vignette, believing the symptoms to be worse than those who did not associate Alzheimer’s disease with mental illness as strongly.
“If we have a strong belief Alzheimer’s disease is a mental illness…it could impact our willingness or openness to learn a gene or biomarker result,” Dr. Stites said.
You can listen to the full episode here.
This free program is for PMC patients experiencing memory change, or for those with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage dementia. Throughout a series of classes, participants will engage in collaborative and creative musical experiences, with a particular focus on creating new music. Participants will also be treated to musical performances by Curtis Institute students, including a concert at the end of the program! Beginners welcome.
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, October 8, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, October 15, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, October 22, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, October 29, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, November 5, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, November 12, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, November 19, 2019
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, January 21, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, January 28, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, February 4, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, February 11, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, February 18, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, February 25, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, 2020
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Where:
The Curtis Institute of Music
1616 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA
Lenfest Hall, Room LH314
RSVP by contacting:
Alexandra Acaba Barrocal at alexandra.acaba@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
It’s said the best careers are found when following one’s passion. Rarely does someone get to follow two passions at once.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Darina Petrovsky, MN, PhD, has taken her love and a lifelong passion for music and combined it with a background in nursing science to conduct studies specifically looking at music’s effects on cognition in older adults, including a study published this year in Psychology of Music on musical ability in adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
She became involved in music growing up in Russia under the guidance of her grandmother, who was never formally trained and survived World War II in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, as a child.
“She was always working around musicians and had a good sense of what good music is,” Dr. Petrovsky said. “She never had a lot of resources. During World War II there was a blockade. You couldn’t get food in and out, but they still had concerts so they could still enjoy music.”
At age 7, Dr. Petrovsky auditioned for an after-school music program for formal training. She attended the program until she was 14, learning music theory, choir performance, and a variety of instruments. She brought this love with her when she moved to the U.S. at 14 and began exploring other outlets for her talent. She picked up a side gig in high school playing solo piano or accompanied by other singers at nursing homes, which brought to her attention what music could achieve in a specific audience.
“It was a great way for me to engage with this population. They really enjoyed our performances…after that, I always wanted to work with older adults,” she said.
Dr. Petrovksy played piano all through high school and as the focus of her Bachelor’s in Musical Arts at Michigan University. She switched tracks in graduate school, earning her Master’s in Nursing at Case Western Reserve University before achieving her PhD in nursing at UPenn in 2017.
Most of Dr. Petrovsky’s work has focused on the intersection of music and brain health and their ability to impact one another. In one study, she interviewed adult choir performers at Mercy LIFE in West Philadelphia, a program of all-inclusive care for the elderly, to find out what benefits they believe singing has on them at this stage in their lives.
Darina Petrovsky, MN, PhD, leads the Penn Memory Center choir at the Research Partner Thank You Breakfast.
Her recent study with the Penn Memory Center examined where adults with MCI rank their “musical engagement” — how often they listen, play, or go out to see music — and what other musical abilities and interests they had. Dr. Petrosky also wanted to see if there was a correlation between this musical ability and scores on cognitive tests. What she found was somewhat surprising and not in line with the researchers’ hypothesis gong into the study.
While other studies presented some of the benefits music education had on cognitive abilities in older adults, Dr. Petrovsky’s team found that there was not much correlation between her group’s test scores and their musical engagement, and when there was a correlation, it was actually negative, with poorer test scores.
“This means two things,” she said, “a) the scale that we used may not be very good or b) musical ability and the ability to think about your engagement is a whole different part of the brain.”
Currently, she is conducting a study on how listening to music at bedtime affects sleep in older adults with dementia.
Dr. Petrovsky has also led the Penn Memory Center Choir for Older Adults and has been a performer at Penn Memory Center’s Memory Cafe at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City, drawing on her musical education and love of piano to continue meshing her two passions.
Fans of Penn Memory Center’s popular Memory Café now have an additional option in University City.
Daylight Café will debut 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, September 25 at the Drexel University Community Wellness HUB. The café is free and open to any individual with cognitive impairment and their care partner. Light refreshments will be provided.
The Daylight Cafe will be regularly scheduled on the fourth Wednesday of every month. For more details, email daylightcafe@drexel.edu or call 215-359-5627.
PMC hosts its own free Memory Café in Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City. The next café is 10:30 a.m. to noon on September 27 and will include performances by the Curtis Institute of Music. Please RSVP to Alison Lynn at 215-360-0257 or alison.lynn@uphs.upenn.edu. All 2019 dates are posted here.
By Sharnita MidgettHow does a clinician decide when to listen to the decisions of their patients or override those decisions for their patients’ safety? This is a question of decision-making capacity, which is impacted by several factors and is sometimes hard to determine.
Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University and lead writer Rocksheng Zhong, MD, MHS, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy Dominic Sisti, PhD, and PMC Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD, co-authored an article discussing the pragmatic approach to assessing decision-making capacity.