the Comprehensive Center for brain health was created to allow us to take what's called a transdisciplinary approach taking Specialists from many many different fields and breaking down the usual walls or barriers that pigeonhole researchers and working as a team to understand what constitutes healthy brain aging and what puts people from diverse backgrounds at different risks for developing diseases like Alzheimer's disease we developed a group of tools which we call the brain health platform so this allows us to look at resilience factors what makes the brain stronger vulnerability factors what makes the brain weaker and performance which tells us how someone's doing at that moment in time then we can look at it individual look at those individual factors that are putting them at higher or lower risk and develop a personalized plan to address it and I think that's really the key because one size fits all really fits no one but if I know everything about that person then I can tailor those recommendations specifically to that individual to that blue line and then come back we created a study called the healthy brain initiative we do a bunch of medical testing we share some of the results back with individuals so they have feedback on this and then we ask them to come back every year our goal is to recruit about 500 people and follow them over time and we're really trying to focus on having a diverse sample we're trying to understand how women with certain genetic traits May progress faster than women without those traits and faster than men we're trying to understand what are some of the underlying differences between How African Americans perform on test and other groups perform on tests we are trying to develop some novel markers that can tell us what puts people at risk these include things like how people speak their pattern of speech how their eyes track objects in space and how they stand and walk and we're using techniques called machine learning which is sort of like artificial intelligence using the information whether the machine can pick out who has disease and who doesn't and these markers appear to be very powerful early Detectors of people at risk for disease place your chin here yep participants are invited to come to the center they're usually here for about four hours when they come we go through the lab work once labs are completed then we begin with memory assessments um summon our pen and paper others are computer-based then they are met with a research clinic and who will do a very thorough physical function assessment that they have them walk in a digital mat and for example one of the exercises that they do is they have to say the alphabet backwards as they're walking so they're using their executive function we also have an in-body machine that not only tells us what their BMI is but also can tell us a little bit more if there's any muscle mass things that we can maybe work on I think that one of the most exciting things about this program is all the tests that are conducted and the information that's given back to me I find it very interesting I like getting that information and then I can share with my primary care physician if there's any concerns they're given the opportunity to get these assessments that typically they normally would not get we also have Retina screening so the retina can actually tell us a lot of what might be going on in the brain silver amyloid plaque I think that what I've learned is it's helped me quell any fears that I have that I do have a significant memory loss you know I forget names I forget things but you know at my age I think that's kind of normal so that's been good that's been good a positive thing the end of the visit everybody sits with a clinician who gives them feedback on how they did what we think is going on with their brain health and then recommendations to improve your brain health and what we find is the people who follow those recommendations they tend to actually show a little bit of improvement from year to year the people who don't follow those recommendations tend not to show much improvement so clearly these type of interventions can make a difference I work in recruiting Latino communities as well as African-American communities communities of color there's a stigma that lies around dementia even the word dementia itself so my work is to educate help them understand that there's nothing to be afraid of that they're going to be contributing to something that's going to help them and eventually help other members in the community Thursday Wednesday Tuesday Monday our bodies are made to move we have a brain that we don't use half of so I try to read I love reading I love reading and I also write so you're going to use only this will okay and then you're gonna stay on the bright dots first if you can Geraldine has been active in her research studies for a number of years so there's a personal connection that's very important to Geraldine her mom passed away from the disease and her sister recently received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's so as a female and an African-American this is very important for her to participate and give back to the the research community and also really to empower her own community that it's important to get checked and find what the Baseline is I'm hoping to learn anything that makes signal where I need help no one wants Alzheimer's I don't want it and I would do what I can to help them find a cure for it when we have conversations as Physicians and health care providers we often focus on you know disease and disability and death and we talk very little about health and capability and vitality right so what we're trying to do is sort of change the topic of conversation instead of talking reactively to a disease that's already happened let's talk proactively to potentially prevent a disease from developing you know let's not focus on things like life expectancy that's life lived long let's focus on health expectancy which is life lived well and I think that's what makes our project very very different than what most people are doing when you walk in it doesn't say Alzheimer Clinic it doesn't say memory disorder clinic it says brain health and that's the focus we want to find out what your risk is what we can do about it because we want to make you the best you that you can be