Minding Memory

In this episode, Matt & Donovan speak with a health economist, Dr. Lauren Nicholas, whose research investigates how missing a single credit card payment may be a very early indicator of a cognitive issue. Dr. Nicholas is an associate professor in the department of Health Systems Management & Policy at the University of Colorado School of Public Health and has published several studies that...

In this episode, Donovan & Matt speak with Geoffrey Hoffman, a faculty member and researcher at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Dr. Hoffman discusses the transition to the role of caregiver for partners of persons diagnosed with dementia – and the unique emotional burden and stress that they undertake. Dr. Hoffman also discusses using the Health & Retirement Study (...

In this episode we’ll speak with Dr. Julie Bynum who was the senior author on a recent study that examined how the likelihood of receiving a diagnosis of dementia has changed over the last decade or so. We’ll discuss what this might mean clinically and what researchers that rely on Medicare data should take-away from this finding. We also will talk in general about the various approaches...

In this episode we discuss what’s known about the association between personality type and cognitive function. Further, the idea of resilience—or what protects the cognition of individuals with a high level of neuropathology associated with cognitive decline—might have important implications for dementia prevention. Our guests are Dr. Eileen Graham and Dr. Dan Mroczek. Drs. Graham and Mroczek...

Health data analysts are an elusive bunch in the wild. While we see their names periodically show up as middle authors on manuscripts or in the Acknowledgement section they work largely behind the scenes; yet they play a vital role in conducting research that use large data. In this episode we speak with several health data analysts to better understand the role they play in research and...

This week we feature a recent study by Katherine Ornstein and colleagues that was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Ornstein studies family caregiving and the home-based clinical care. The study used Medicare claims linked to the National Health and Aging Trends Study to estimate the degree to which people living with dementia use health services from home.&nbsp...

For older adults living with dementia, cognitive impairment can lead to susceptibility to fraudulent activities. In this episode we’ll discuss with Dr. Duke Han from the Keck School of Medicine at USC what’s known about the intersection of aging, cognition, and susceptibility to scams. The transcript for this episode can be found here . Duke Han PhD Faculty Profile:   https://profiles.sc...

Causes of death were reclassified by the CDC to include contributing factors such as dementia. These changes resulted in dementia jumping up from the 8th cause of death in 2000 to the 6th cause of death in 2018 (and the 5th cause of death among older adults). In this episode we’ll talk with Dr. Bryan James from Rush University about dementia as a cause of death (versus contributing factor). D...

If you’re new to dementia research, you’ll soon come to find that most research papers on dementia start off something like this: “In the United States there are 5.8 million individuals living with dementia and this is expected to increase to 13 million by 2015. . . .” In this episode we discuss the study on dementia prevalence that has been cited thousands of times with one of the authors.&n...

In our last episode we talked about caregivers for individuals living with dementia. In this second part of our series on caregivers we’ll get to know someone with lived experience. We’re joined in this episode by Peggy Arden whose husband has Alzheimer’s disease. Peggy has graciously agreed to offer us a behind the scenes look at the ups and downs of being a dementia caregiver. The tran...

Individuals living with dementia require care that is often delivered by family and friends. This episode is devoted to discussing some of the unique aspects of dementia caregiving. Our guest today is Dr. Amanda Leggett. Dr. Leggett is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry here at the University of Michigan. Her research, funded by the National Institut...

One of the richest data sources available to study cognition and aging is the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). This nationally representative survey includes questions to help assess cognition, but many researchers may use this data without actually knowing the questions behind the variables—don’t be That Guy! (or Gal!) Listen to Dr. Lindsay Ryan, an HRS team member, coach Matt as he administers...

While there are some FDA-approved medications for dementia, more individuals living with dementia are actually prescribed psychotropic medications. In this episode, Donovan introduces Matt to the concept of the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia, which are just as much part of dementia as the memory loss—and are probably a big reason for all this other prescribing.&nb...

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Sara Adar. She is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in the department of epidemiology. Dr. Adar was the senior author on a study titled “Long-term community noise exposure in relation to dementia, cognition, and cognitive decline in older adults” that was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. ...

Often research studies consider dementia as either present or absent, while others specify particular types of dementia. For example, what exactly is frontotemporal dementia? In this episode, we talk with Dr. Henry (Hank) Paulson, who directs the Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center, to introduce listeners to the most common types of dementia and hear about some of their definin...

In this episode we continue our discussion of the implications of the approval of the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm (generic name Aducanumab). Our guest this week is Professor Nicholas Bagley. Bagley is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and a contributing writer to the Atlantic. Recently he wrote an article titled “The Drug that Could Break American Health Care” that discusses...

Aducanumab is a new drug designed to remove amyloid in the brain. Following an accelerated process, the Food and Drug Administration approved Aducanumab as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease despite (what many experts feel) little evidence of effectiveness. In this episode we discuss the approval of Aducanumab with Dr. Jason Karlawish from the University of Pennsylvania and talk about w...

In this episode we talk with Dr. Ken Langa about the implications of identification of “preclinical” Alzheimer’s disease (situations where individuals may have biological signs of Alzheimer’s but no symptoms). Ken is a leading dementia researcher and our discussion focuses on an article he published called “Preclinical Alzheimer Disease – Early Diagnosis or Overdiagnosis” that was p...

Welcome to the podcast! In this episode we introduce ourselves and provide an overview of the Minding Memory Podcast. This podcast is supported by the Center to Accelerate Population Research in Alzheimer’s (CAPRA) at the University of Michigan. Our guest this week is Dr. Julie Bynum. Julie is the director of CAPRA and we talk briefly about what the NIH-funded researc...