Latest News

Kristin Harkins, MPH

By: Erin Alessandroni

As advances in imaging and other technologies continue to take place, clinicians will have the ability to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) years before the onset of clinical symptoms. This progress may present difficulties, such as informing cognitively healthy individuals of potentially distressing information.

Kristin Harkins, MPH and Jason Karlawish, MD, both of the Penn Memory Center, provide considerations clinicians must make when disclosing amyloid status to a person without cognitive impairments in an article published to Practical Neurology.

Riddhi Patira, MD

By Erin Alessandroni

Every 70 seconds, someone in America is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Two Penn Memory Center clinicians have a published set of recommendations regarding the care that follows.

Riddhi Patira, MD and Sanjeev Vaishnavi, MD, PhD discuss the “epidemic proportions” AD is reaching, with no effective therapies to prevent onset or stop disease progression, in a recent article published to the journal Practical Neurology.

By Erin Alessandroni

Shana Stites, PsyD, MS, MA

The stigma associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) often presents patients and their families with psychological and social challenges. Penn Memory Center provides steps clinicians can take to minimize this stigma in a paper published to Practical Neurology.

PMC Scholar Shana D. Stites, PsyD, MS, MA and PMC Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD describe stigma’s consequences on both how a patient and caregiver react to a diagnosis (“internalized stigma”) and how the community treats the diagnosed in discriminatory or patronizing ways (“public stigma”). Additionally, a third type of stigma called “spillover stigma” can affect caregivers and family members who become associated with presumed negative societal traits.

By Kaleah McIlwain

Penn Memory Center neurologist Sanjeev Vaishnavi, MD, PhD recently visited senior living and memory care center Atria Center City, where he presented the talk “Dementia: Getting a Proper Diagnosis.”

Atria Center City is sponsoring PMC’s November Caregiver Retreat, and part of this sponsorship includes a presentation from a PMC dementia specialist.

By Kaleah McIlwain

Papa John yells “zap” and shoots his hand towards Abby, charged with shouting “zop.” What comes out, however is a loud “zip.”

The error is met not with jeers but raucous applause.

Cheering when someone makes a mistake is Leah Lawler’s way of emphasizing that mistakes are acceptable. She encourages this way of thinking in her weekly Cognitive Comedy workshop, where more than a dozen participants come together and exercise memory muscles with various improv exercises. Lawler, a Philadelphia actor, started the weekly workshop with the Penn Memory Center (PMC) as a way to combine social engagement with learning a new skill and having fun.

“It provides a sense of community and belonging. It is fun and gets older adults out of the house with something stimulating and meaningful to do,” said Felicia Greenfield, PMC executive director. “They are engaged, they’re learning new skills, [and] they’re exercising their memory muscle.”  

By Kaleah McIlwain

A typical research visit at the Penn Memory Center (PMC) asks quite a bit of research study participants and their study partners.

There’s the travel needed to get to the center, the time spent in the waiting room, and then the series of cognitive tests, blood draws, MRI scans, possible PET scans, and more that participants are asked to undergo.

In response, PMC holds an annual Research Partner Thank You Luncheon (or, in previous years, a breakfast) to show appreciation for research participants and their study partners and to update them on the status of current research studies and programs.

The theme of this year’s luncheon was “Precision Medicine and the Aging Brain,” focusing on the shift in Alzheimer’s disease research towards using biomarkers to determine who has or is at risk of developing the disease.

“Someday you won’t have to be sick, you won’t have to be ill, to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Jason Karlawish, PMC co-director. “Signs and symptoms won’t matter.”

Penn Memory Center 2017-2018 Cognitive and Behavioral Fellow Dr. Riddhi Patira (Photo by Joyce Lee)

By Joyce Lee

Five afternoons a week, Riddhi Patira, MD, sees patients and families in the Penn Memory Center clinic. She talks about their concerns with memory, evaluates their cognitive tests, neurological exams, and brain scans, and helps them make a plan of action that could include medications, clinical study enrollment, and referrals.

Dr. Patira was trained to do all this as a Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology Fellow at the Penn Memory Center this past year. This unique fellowship program trains neurologists in all aspects of clinical care for dementia, and is one of only a handful of such programs nationwide that produces UCNS-certified specialists in Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry.

Seetha Chandrasekhara, MD (Photo by Joyce Lee)

By Joyce Lee

If you walked into the Penn Memory Center clinic on a Monday afternoon this past year, you probably saw Seetha Chandrasekhara, MD, helping both patients with memory problems and their loved ones.

A Geriatric Psychiatry Fellow with the University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Chandrasekhara joined PMC in the summer of 2017 after completing her psychiatry residency at Temple University. Her time at PMC was a core yearlong rotation as part of the program, “because geriatric psychiatry involves a lot of dementia and management of the behaviorial symptoms of dementia,” she said.

By Joyce Lee

Join Penn Memory Center in saying farewell and good luck to research coordinator Benjamin Bear, MSW.

Mr. Bear joined the Penn Memory Center (PMC) in 2017, after graduating with his Master’s degree in social work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. At PMC, he primarily conducted qualitative data collection and analysis for the SOKRATES II study, working with Kristin Harkins, MPH, to understand why individuals decide to share or not share with others knowledge of their APOE genotype, a gene used to predict risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

“Benjamin’s social work training made him a skilled interviewer. He connected with research participants and treated them with empathy and compassion,” said Ms. Harkins. “His kindness and unique clinical perspective were great assets to our work together. He will be missed.”