Risk factors for cognitive aging and dementia

Therapeutic strategies to maintain and improve cognitive abilities during aging and dementia

Our overriding interest is in aging, cognition, and dementia both at the population level and at the level of individual adults.  Our research agenda encompasses cognitive change that occurs as a usual concomitant of normal aging and more debilitating impairment that accompanies Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. 

Pathological processes that culminate in Alzheimer dementia are believed to begin years, if not decades, before the onset of mental symptoms.  For this reason, we are interested in factors that affect cognitive skills at midlife, a time when therapeutic interventions offer the greatest potential of forestalling late-life impairment, as well at older ages, when cognitive impairment more typically first becomes apparent.  One research theme pertains to adult women’s health.  Here, we continue to examine cognitive consequences of estrogen, testosterone and other hormones, whose concentrations vary with age.