Is it possible for an 80-year-old brain to look like a 50-year-old brain? And if so, how? One researcher at Northwestern University was determined to find out. Neuroscientist Emily Rogalski from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine began recruiting volunteers age 80 and up from the Chicago area to test their memories. Why do some… Read more »

The Nobel prizewinning author Gabriel García Márquez is suffering from dementia and can no longer write, his brother revealed this week in Colombia. The Guardian reported that Jaime García Márquez told students in Cartagena that his older brother “has problems with his memory. Sometimes I cry because I feel like I’m losing him,” he said. It… Read more »

It’s never easy to be lonely, but it can be dangerous—life-threatening, even—for the elderly. So says a study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The six-year study, conducted by physicians at the University of California San Francisco, found that people who reported being lonely were more likely to suffer a decline in… Read more »

Do you eat fish, chicken or nuts? If so, a recent study in Neurology should be of interest to you. The study found that the more Omega-3 fatty acids someone eats the lower their blood beta-amyloid levels. This is good news for those that eat a lot of Omega-3 fatty acids as previous studies have… Read more »

A new report from the Alzheimer’s Association indicates that a growing number of people with dementia live alone—more than 800,000 across the country and 72,000 in California. The report, “2012 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures,” estimates that one in seven people with Alzheimer’s or dementia lives alone, and that up to half of those people have no… Read more »

One million Americans are living with the AIDS virus, and the federal government annually spends $3 billion on research. Five million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s or dementia and the number is on track to double by 2050; yet the U.S. government spends just $450 million on the disease. President Obama and the Department of… Read more »

Actually NPR’s series is not on its death bed but this will be the last day you can catch the series live on the air. Don’t fret because you can find the pod-casts for this week long series (Oct. 17-Oct. 25) that explores aging and the end of life on NPR’s website.  Many of us… Read more »

One of college basketball’s best female coaches announced in August that she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s — but that she would continue coaching in spite of the diagnosis. “I plan to continue to be your coach,” Pat Summitt said in a two-minute video statement released by the University of Tennessee’s athletic department. Summitt… Read more »

Arthritis, vision failure and dementia can be challenging for anyone–but the ailments are especially difficult for those people who built their lives around seeing the country from the window of an RV. Once driving becomes impossible, so too does the RV lifestyle, and the community that goes with it. With this in mind, a retired… Read more »

Caregivers and their relatives who suffer from mild to moderate dementia often have different perceptions about the amount and quality of care given and received, so says a study by researchers at Penn State and the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. A major source of those differences? Caregivers do not understand the things that are… Read more »