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On Monday, Victor Ekuta gave a presentation on his research at PMC Didactics Meeting, a requirement for completing the PMC Minority Scholars in Aging Program. The presentation titled “Perturbing Brain States: A Look at Discrete Brain State Transitions Influenced by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” focused on his work these past few months completed with PMC neurologist Roy Hamilton, MD, and John Medaglia, PhD.

Ekuta is a student at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. He plans to pursue a residency in Neurology with a Fellowship in Cognitive/Behavioral Neurology in the future.

Mahdieh Hosseini, also a 2018 PMC Minority Scholar, completed her research project in August 2018. Her presentation on “Effect of HD-tCS on stimulating language recovery in patients with Primary Progressive Aphasia” was based on work completed over the summer in the lab of Dr. Roy Hamilton.

Hosseini is currently a student at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.

Happy holidays and happy new year from all of us at the Penn Memory Center!

In the near future, you should receive a copy of InSight, our annual magazine (click the link for a digital copy). If you don’t receive a copy and would like one, please let me know. The Communications Team has worked hard on the publication, and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed writing, editing, and designing it, while recapping 2018.

In its pages, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about our research — especially the longitudinal Aging Brain Cohort study — and also get a look into the many other aspects that makes PMC unique. Read about our three-year history of Memory Café, our ongoing collaboration with the Curtis Institute of Music, and our involvement with the original opera Sky on Swings. You’ll also receive an update on the latest “Art of the Mind” exhibition, which involves copper work by Carl Duzen, our patient and resident artist. 

University of Pennsylvania Institute on Aging (IOA) and Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center (ADCC) announced that IOA and ADCC will fund up to six one-year multidisciplinary pilot grants in the 2019-2020 academic year, pending availability of funds. These grants will support biomedical, epidemiological, behavioral or health services research, as well as basic science, clinical or psychosocial research. Applications are due February 4, 2019.

Two of the pilots will be funded by Penn’s ADCC and will focus on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related neurodegenerative disorders. The remaining pilots will be supported by funding from the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn (PSOM) to the IOA and will focus on aging and aging-related diseases. More information can be found here.

Join us for our free monthly Memory Café on January 4 featuring Darina Petrovsky, PhD, RN, who will provide education about Russian Nativity celebrated on January 7 and provide traditional Russian Christmas songs and carols. Dr. Darina Petrovsky is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and a former doctoral student at the Penn Memory Center. She is a pianist and a nurse by training.

Events will be held at Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American Street, Philadelphia, PA. To RSVP, contact Alison Lynn at 215-360-0257 or alison.lynn@uphs.upenn.edu.

Friday, January 4
10:30 a.m. to Noon
Christ Church Neighborhood House
20 N. American Street, Philadelphia

RSVP: alison.lynn@uphs.upenn.edu

Although our final Memory Café of the year concluded with Curtis Institute of Music last week, our relationship with the the world-class conservatory will continue into the new year.

Since 2015, the PMC has collaborated with the Curtis Institute for various programs including caregiver retreats, the annual Thank You Breakfast and Luncheons, Creative Expression Through Music, and Project HOME.

Our ongoing relationship is detailed in an article published on the PMC website.

Talented, young students from the Curtis Institute of Music joined us on Friday as we wrapped up our final Memory Café of 2018.

The session also marked our three-year anniversary of these special cafés. This week, we’ve been reflecting on how the idea came to life, where it is now, and how we can improve the monthly, 90-minute event.

In an article published on the PMC website, frequent café-goers David and Sue Dyke, and PMC Associate Director of Social Work Alison Lynn, MSW, LCSW, shed insight on what the events offer and how they’ve gotten bigger and better.

“It was very bare bones,” Lynn, who has been leading the sessions since summer 2016, said of the first Memory Café. “It’s evolved now into this thing where we have that time for socialization, then we have a performer. But it was not like that at the beginning.”

Much of Alzheimer’s disease research around the globe involves investigating drugs to figure out if they may help slow the progression of the disease.

And while we too have those trials going on at the PMC (such as the A4 study), it’s not just about drugs here. We’re also investigating a lot of creative ways, many of which focus on cognitive fitness, to tackle Alzheimer’s disease.