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In her ongoing exhibition, “Revelations and Transformation, Layers of Memory,” local artist Patricia Moss-Vreeland explores memory “as a meditation on who we are.” On June 20, she’ll invite members of the Penn Memory Center community to do the same.

Join PMC’s Felicia Greenfield and Moss-Vreeland for a free, one-time workshop sponsored by PMC. Guests will learn to become “creators through the lens of memory,” said Moss-Vreeland, who will also lead a guided tour of the exhibition. The workshop is open to PMC patients, research participants, and caregivers, and we can accommodate up to 20 guests.

Time: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Date: June 20, 2017
Place: Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, Second Floor, South Pavilion
RSVP: Felicia Greenfield at 215-662-4523 or felicia.greenfield@uphs.upenn.edu
*Light refreshments will be provided.*

Les Wolff stood at the edge of the circle, introduced himself, and threw a punch into the air before him. For the next few minutes, anytime his name was mentioned, a punch was thrown.

It was all part of an improv exercise at the inaugural Cognitive Comedy workshop, presented by the Penn Memory Center with local comedian Leah Lawler. The program is now seeking volunteers for its third “season.”

By Chloe Elmer

Picture a zombie, and images of horror movies will flash before your eyes.

The guttural sounds.

Lifeless eyes.

Loved ones now unrecognizable.

Anything but human.

In his latest Forbes column, “Alzheimer’s Disease Patients Aren’t Zombies; They’re People And We Need To Treat Them Like People,” Penn Memory Center Co-Director Jason Karlawish takes on the metaphor that Alzheimer’s patient are the living dead of Hollywood films and horror novels.

Portraits captured by Kathryn Raines (plate3photography.com)

Please join the Penn Memory Center in taking a look through the lens at Philadelphia’s performance community at our next Memory Café.

Local photographer Kathryn Raines, of Plate 3 Studio, will be featured as this month’s featured guest at the PMC Memory Café Friday, June 2.

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Living with Dementia: Impact on Individuals,
Caregivers, Communities and Societies

For health professionals, students, family caregivers, friends of and affected individuals, and others looking to learn about dementia and quality care

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Dana Goldberg (bottom right) presented at World Elder Abuse Awareness Day in June 2016.

Dana Goldberg looks at the problem of financial abuse of seniors and sees an epidemic.

Older adults in the US have a steady source of income whether they are wealthy or not, making them a target for scammers. Additionally, changes in older adults’ cognition can make financial management more difficult. The result is that every year billions of dollars are lost in the US to fraud and exploitation.

“This is an epidemic and we need to treat it that way,” Goldberg said.

Bob Ibold is known to many as “The Mask Man.”

He is an expert collector and curator of masks from around the world. But Ibold does not use his masks to hide or obscure his identity. He embraces who he is, especially when it comes to the discussion of his cognitive decline.

Ibold was recently featured in the American Journal of Public Health, in an article titled “A Typical Day With Mild Cognitive Impairment.”

Occasionally, art and science come together so that each can breathe new life into the other.

Artist Patricia Moss-Vreeland has joined the theme of memory and mixed-media arts in her exhibition “Revelations and Transformation, Layers of Memory,” now on display at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine’s “Art of the Mind” gallery space.

A bipartisan Congressional deal reached Sunday night calls for an additional $400 million in funding for Alzheimer’s disease research as part of a $2 billion increase in this year’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget, StatNews reported.

The increase will bring federal funding of Alzheimer’s disease research to $1.4 billion, a threefold increase over the last five years, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

The deal does not address 2018, when President Donald Trump has called for an 18-percent cut in the NIH budget. The NIH supports medical research across the nation, including at the Penn Memory Center (PMC).

Visitors to this month’s Memory Café were treated to a unique performance by singer/songwriter Umer Piracha.

Piracha’s music is a multilingual blend of Pakistani-folk-inspired songs, performed alongside more traditionally Western tracks. A Pakistani native and a longtime resident of Philadelphia, Piracha infuses his performances with conversation and storytelling to lead his audiences through various musical influences and traditions.