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The Penn Memory Center is proud to present “Alzheimer’s: The New Normal” in collaboration with Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Date: Saturday, May 14, 2016

Talk: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (lunch provided by Penn Memory Center to follow)

Location: Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, 230 West Coulter Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19144

RSVP: Contact Rev. Leroy Miles, associate pastor, at lmiles@enontab.org or 215-276-7200 by May 9.

Members of the public are invited to this free conversation on cognitive aging, Alzheimer’s disease, research, and caregiving.

Patients in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, weakened by a lack of nutrition, often die from pneumonia, said Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish.

Responding to a New York Times reader question, Karlawish said these Alzheimer’s patients may stop eating and increase their risk of infection.

“You see a general decline in the contribution the brain makes, not just in thinking, but in maintaining the body’s homeostasis,” Karlawish said, adding that feeding tubes are discouraged, as they only prolong the patient’s suffering.

 
Alzheimer’s disease strikes at the core of what makes us human: our capacity to think, to love, and to remember. The disease ravages the minds of over 40 million victims worldwide, and it is one of the greatest medical mysteries of our time.

Join investigators as they gather clues and attempt to reconstruct the molecular chain of events that ultimately leads to dementia, and follow key researchers in the field who have helped to develop the leading theories of the disease.

Along the way, meet individuals from all walks of life who will reveal what it’s like to struggle with Alzheimer’s. Among them, members of a unique Colombian family who have learned that their genetic predisposition all but guarantees early onset Alzheimer’s.

Yet there may be hope. Join these courageous patients participating in clinical trials, and then go behind the scenes of the major drug trials to see how researchers target and test therapies that may slow and even prevent Alzheimer’s.

“Can Alzheimer’s Be Stopped?” will air 9 p.m. April 13 on PBS.

Could wearable technology replace a glass of wine or a cup of coffee as a relaxation tool? Several companies think so, but one Penn Memory Center researcher said he has not yet worn the tech.

Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s “Note To Self,” tried a combination of wearable technology and an app called Thync as a relaxation tool.

The idea is that by pairing software and headphones, “you can make your brain better,” Zomorodi said.

Dr. Roy Hamilton, who in addition to his work at the Penn Memory Center directs the University of Pennsylvania’s Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation, said there is no evidence that products like Thync could have longterm adverse effects, but he still hasn’t personally tested the app.

“Your brain is not just one cognitive function. Your brain is circuits modulating, circuits interacting with networks that interact with other networks,” Hamilton said. “It’s the most complex instrument in the known universe, and we’re hitting it with current in these pretty crude ways.”

You can hear the complete Note to Self episode at www.wnyc.org.

Theatre of Witness, an innovative story-telling group, focusing on deep listening and creative expression, is preparing for a six-week workshop at Ralston House.

Theatre of Witness is “a form of theater in which the true stories of people whose voices haven’t been heard are performed by the people themselves as a way for audiences to bear witness and humanize the other,” explained founder Teya Sepinuck.

Partnering with the Penn Memory Center and ARTZ Philadelphia, Sepinuck plans to bring together caregivers and loved ones living with dementia for six workshops 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays from April 6 to May 11.

Stephen Hume pictured his life as a room full of open windows and doors. Outside, the sun was shining, illuminating the path his life could take as he stepped through one of the countless thresholds.

But when his doctor diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s disease, “all those doors and windows shut, and I was in the dark.”

The House of Alzheimer’s Disease, where Hume found himself after that moment, has but one entrance through a door called dementia, Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish said.

Speaking at “The Changing Face of Alzheimer’s, Revisited,” a February symposium hosted by Drexel University, Karlawish explained that what he calls the House of Alzheimer’s Disease is slated for substantial reconstruction.

“To enter the House of Alzheimer’s Disease, an Alzheimer’s doctor like myself has to diagnose and label you with dementia. Until now,” he said.

Bankers and financial analysts are the “front lines” of screening and detection of cognitive impairment, and their industries need to catch up before a growing problem becomes uncontrollable.

“The banking and financial services industry of today that fails to address this problem will not be around tomorrow,” Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish said Monday at the 2016 Securities Industry Institute at The Wharton School. “It’s time to rethink your business model.”

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, caregiver to President Ronald Reagan after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, died Sunday morning.

In 1994, Ronald Reagan announced in a letter: “I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.”

From that moment forward, he and Nancy Reagan held a public dialogue of his diagnosis and the disease, Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It was “tremendously courageous of them to issue that letter to the nation because it directly challenged the stigma that was attached to the diagnostic label,” Karlawish said.

Read the complete obituary at www.philly.com.

Dr. William Jagust explains how tau and beta amyloid, two proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, develop in the aging brain. (Photo by Stephen McNally, UC Berkeley)

New research led by scientists at UC Berkeley shows for the first time that PET scans can track the progressive stages of Alzheimer’s disease in cognitively normal adults, a key advance in the early diagnosis and staging of the neurodegenerative disorder.

In the process, the scientists also obtained important clues about two Alzheimer’s-linked proteins – tau and beta-amyloid – and how they relate to each other.

The findings, published March 2 in the journal Neuron, come from positron emission tomography (PET) of 53 adults. Five were young adults aged 20-26, 33 were cognitively healthy adults aged 64-90 and 15 were patients aged 53-77 who had been diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s dementia.