News and Announcements

Emily Rogalski, PhD, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and associate director of the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, studies a group of people who seem to be immune to the memory decline that typically comes with age. Dr. Rogalski and her team hope to identify what allows these “SuperAgers” to maintain outstanding memory performance into their 80s and beyond.

On the 60th anniversary of the Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Awards, the Eczacıbaşı Medical Award of Honor was presented to Prof. Dr. Marsel Mesulam, for his outstanding contributions to medical science and tremendous support of academicians and scientific events in Turkey.

Dr. Darby Morhardt and Dr. Bonakdarpour of the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease were both recipients of the 2018-2019 Outstanding Teacher Award from the Office of Medical Education. Dr. Morhardt received her award for her role as an AOSC (Area of Scholarly Concentration) Research Mentor, and Dr. Bonakdarpour received his award for his student lecture on Dementia.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have pinpointed the location of dysfunctional brain networks that lead loss of language in primary progressive aphasia, a form of dementia.

Can understanding Super Agers help tell us what keeps our minds younger for longer? It's early days, but some clues are emerging from places like the Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Ten years ago a team there led by neuropsychologists Sandra Weintraub and Emily Rogalski flipped its research paradigm on the head. Instead of looking at what was going wrong to give people Alzheimer's disease they started looking at what was going right for those whose brains weren't ageing the same way.

The new report offers “good news and bad news,” said Sandra Weintraub, a professor and clinical core director at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The good news is that for most people the decline “wasn’t that great,” Weintraub said. “Having said that, it really puts patients between a rock and a hard place if they’re told they need surgery and worry about losing mental function,” Weintraub said.

Dr. Tamar Gefen, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University, said the results of Mayeda’s study align with existing research on factors that lower the risk of late-life cognitive decline. “There is evidence in the literature suggesting a limited number of factors that can perhaps lower the risk of developing cognitive impairment in later life. This includes aerobic exercise, healthy nutrition, mental activity and engagement,” Gefen said in an email interview.

Tamar D. Gefen, PhD of the Mesulam Center was awarded the NACC-Sponsored New Investigator Project Award. Her project titled, "Clinicopathologic substrates of dementia syndromes with FTLD-tau," looks to disentangle the complex relationship between dementia syndromes, anatomic atrophy, cell death, and a specific form of FTLD, known as FTLD-tau. This is one of the first works of its kind that aims to establish clinical, anatomic, and pathologic concordance of high specificity between clinical dementia syndromes and the tauopathies that cause them. Outcomes of this multidisciplinary study will clarify the pathologic underpinnings of clinical heterogeneity in dementias, sharpen our understanding of the principles of selective vulnerability, and are highly relevant for the development of tauopathy-specific diagnostic tools and treatments.

Doctors have newly outlined a type of dementia that could be more common than Alzheimer's among the oldest adults, according to a report published Tuesday in the journal Brain. Dr. Sandra Weintraub, of the Mesulam Center, affirms the heterogeneity of dementia.

An experimental treatment originally intended to help patients recover from stroke may have beneficial effects for Alzheimer’s disease, according to a recent study.

More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, including 230,000 in Illinois. By 2050, that number is projected to rise to nearly 14 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. There is no cure for the neurodegenerative condition, symptoms of which include memory loss, difficulty completing daily tasks and challenges in planning or solving problems. Many clinical trials are focused on prevention or disease-modifying therapies, which tend to exclude people who are already experiencing symptoms, says Northwestern University neurologist Dr. Ian Grant. While those types of therapies could eventually lead to a cure, Grant says it’s also important to study therapies that alleviate symptoms. The T2 Protect AD study seeks to do just that.

Eating right, exercising, and getting a good night’s sleep can all help us stay healthy. But can participating in the arts also help us thrive as we age? Researchers are looking at singing groups, theater training, and visual arts for older adults to see if the arts may improve the health, well-being, and independence of older people.In this article, learn about how several studies are having a positive impact on participants including the Mesulam Center's Memory Ensemble co-founded by Darby Morhardt, PhD.

The 8th Annual Les Turner Symposium brought together investigators, clinicians, patients and families to share the latest discoveries in ALS research, promote scientific collaboration and provide patient education.

The new findings highlight the need for more studies involving larger groups of patients, said Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour, an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center. Bonakdarpour believes that music therapy can also be used to improve social interactions. “We are doing some interventions here to see if it can improve interactions between patients and caregivers,” he said. “We have preliminary data that suggests it helps.”

Feinberg met its goal of raising $10 million for the newly renamed Mesulam Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center, naming the Center after its director, M. Marsel Mesulam, MD.