Latest News

A National Institutes of Health public-private partnership aimed at accelerating Alzheimer’s disease drug development  launched its “Big Data” portal on Wednesday, March 4, 2015, enabling researchers to share and analyze large biomedical datasets. The first wave of data was also released.

The venture brings together NIH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and industry and academic scientists from a variety of disciplines with a goal of  translate knowledge faster and more successfully into new therapies.

“This is an important initiative that could lead to novel targets for AD drug discovery,” says John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of Penn’s Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center.

You can visit the The AMP AD Knowledge Portal here.

A film documenting the year in the life of a woman with Frontotemporal Degeneration will debut on Tuesday, March 10th at 8 pm on WHYY TV Philadelphia.  View a short trailer of Looks Like Laury, Sounds Like Laury here.

The New York Times reports that Federal investigators have found evidence of overuse of psychiatric drugs by older Americans with Alzheimer’s disease, and are recommending that Medicare officials take immediate action to reduce unnecessary prescriptions.The findings were released on Monday, March 2, 2015 by the Government Accountability Office. You can read the report here and you can find the New York Times article here.

The Aging Brain and Alzheimer’s Disease: Let’s Talk About Your Brain

The Franklin Institute

March 11, 2015
7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Join experts in aging and Alzheimer’s disease from the Penn Memory Center for an evening at the Franklin Institute. We’ll discuss the aging brain, Alzheimer’s disease and the impact it has on families and communities.

Presenters include:

John Trojanowski, M.D., Ph.D.
Director of the Institute on Aging and Co-Director, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, University of Pennsylvania

Felicia Greenfield, L.C.S.W.
Associate Director for Clinical and Research Operations, Penn Memory Center, University of Pennsylvania

Staff from the Penn Memory Center will be on hand talk about our programs and services including PENN Care Management (our geriatric care management program), Cognitive Fitness, research opportunities and more.

Ticket Prices:
Free for Franklin Institute members
$5.00 for non-members

For more information, click here. To register for this event, please call 215-448-1200.

Dr. Jason Karlawish, associate director of the Penn Memory Center, will speak at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Ethics Committee Educational Seminar on Thursday, March 5 at 4pm. The topic will be “Ethical Issues in the Care of Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment.”

For more information contact James Kirkpatrick, MD at james.kirkpatrick@uphs.upenn.edu or Mary Walton, MSN, RN, MBE at mary.walton@uphs.upenn.edu.

To download a flyer, click here.

CME Information:

Title: Ethical issues in the care of older adults with cognitive impairment
Presenter: Jason Karlawish, MD
Series: Ethics Education Seminar Series 2014-2015
Date: 3-5-2015
URL: http://penncmeonline.com/eess2014-2015//node/39626

**How to Submit Your RSS Attendance Electronically**: We offer two methods for electronically submitting your attendance at Regularly Scheduled Series:
a) SMS text messaging or b) via the web.

For complete instructions on both processes, please visit:
http://penncmeonline.com/electronic-attendance-instructions

Penn CME
http://penncmeonline.com/eess2014-2015/

If you’re like many Americans, getting a good night’s sleep can often seem out of reach. A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine shows that practicing mindfulness meditation can significantly improve the quality of one’s sleep. As Anahad O’Connor points out in The New York Times – Well – Health, this can be particularly relevant to Americans older than 55, about half of whom have some form of sleep trouble. You can read the JAMA study here.

A group of musicians, all suffering, to varying degrees, from dementia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, call themselves The Fifth Dementia and jam together twice a week. PBS NewsHour visited with the musicians and their families to learn how music has made a difference in their lives, by helping them stay active and connected. You can read the report and watch a video here.

The students of the Penn Neuroscience Graduate Group are hosting a Neuroscience Public Lecture entitled “Degeneration in the Aging Brain,” on Thursday, March 12th in Smilow Auditorium at 6:30pm. This FREE event will feature 3 fifteen minute TED-style talks from Penn Neuroscience faculty Virginia Lee, Alice Chen-Plotkin, and Harry Ischiropoulos. A reception will follow.

Registration and more information can be found here (https://nggglia.wordpress.com/neurolecture/).

Date: Thursday, March 12th, 6:30pm (Check-in begins at 6pm)
Location: Smilow Center for Translational Research Auditorium, 3400 Civic Center Blvd, Philadelphia, PA, 19104

A Silicon Valley health start-up, Neurotrack,  is developing a computerized visual test that aims to accurately identify people at risk of Alzheimer’s. The test requires no language or motor skills; participants view images on a monitor while a camera tracks their eye movements. According to Scientific American, “The test draws on the research of Neurotrack co-founder Stuart Zola of Emory University who studies learning and memory in monkeys. When presented with two images—one novel, the other familiar—primates will fixate longer on the novel one. If the hippocampus is damaged, as it is in Alzheimer’s, however, the subject spends equal time looking at each image.”

You can read the Scientific American article here.