Opportunities for Postdoctoral Fellows
Laboratory of Personality and Cognition
National Institute on Aging/Baltimore
Research Program on Early Markers of Alzheimer's Disease in
Selected BLSA Participants: Structural and Functional Brain Changes
Our research program focuses on identifying predictors of
individual differences in trajectories of cognitive aging. Data from
our laboratory indicate that declines in cognition and memory predict
later impairment and that such declines may be early markers of
pathological cognitive aging. Over the last year, we have begun a 9
year longitudinal neuroimaging study to examine the contributions of
changes in brain structure and function to these individual
differences in cognitive aging. Annual magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans are being acquired
and quantified for 180 participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal
Study of Aging (BLSA) who have extensive prior psychological and
physical testing, including as many as 8 memory assessments over more
than 30 years. Volumetric MRI is used to assess changes in brain
structure and PET studies are conducted at rest and during cognitive
challenge with memory tasks to investigate age-associated changes in
regional cerebral blood flow. Changes in brain structure and
physiology are examined in relation to prior cognitive testing and
concurrent neuropsychological evaluations. We use a variety of image
analysis approaches, including SPM, to examine questions about age
changes and brain-behavior associations.
Research opportunities are available for psychologists,
physicians, computer scientists, and engineers with interests in
longitudinal analysis of imaging and neuropsychological data. An
extensive database is available to test hypotheses and develop new
approaches to analysis of longitudinal imaging data. This project
involves extensive collaboration with both the NIH and Johns Hopkins
imaging communities.
If you are interested in additional information, please contact
Susan Resnick at resnick at mvx.grc.nia.nih.gov.
