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About the Center for Healthy Minds
What happens to people's minds when they get older? This is a question with no single answer or explanation. After decades of dedicated research, we know much more today about how to maintain physical health as we age.
Today, research on the aging mind is sufficiently well-developed so that it is possible to develop a blueprint for behaviors that aging Americans may engage in to maintain cognitive health. But there is still plenty of unchartered territory when it comes to mapping out ways that will help us can keep our minds healthy, functional and thriving into late adulthood.
Located within the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Center for Healthy Minds links a cadre of researchers who are well-positioned to seek answers to the question of what conditions and interventions maintain or increase cognitive health with age.
Significant Research
Center for Healthy Minds is truly an interdisciplinary effort, with contributors from psychology, kinesiology, education and aviation. Center researchers study the aging brain by employing older adult volunteer subjects. Many projects involve the use of cutting edge technology, including fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and eye-tracking equipment.
Center researchers focus their efforts around six related hypotheses. They are:
- Physical activity improves cognitive function.
- Cognitive engagement and training supports a healthy mind.
- Social engagement plays an important role in cognitive health.
- Combinations of social and cognitive engagement may be particularly powerful in sustaining cognitive health.
- Cultural context and stereotypes impact on cognitive health.
- Environmental supports promote and support healthy cognitive function in late adulthood.
Here are some of their findings:
- The simple act of mentally picturing a future task helps older people remember to take medications and follow other medical advice.
- Sedentary elderly people who start exercising regularly are sharper and experience growth in crucial brain areas.
- Older pilots maintain high levels of performance even on demanding communication tasks when they can take advantage of external aids such as note-taking to reduce memory demands.
Click here to read about the Center's ongoing studies.
Center Impact and Outreach
The Center for Healthy Minds has made waves beyond the academic world. In the past year alone (2005), its research has been featured in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, PARADE Magazine, Newsweek and USA TODAY. In July 2005, Center Co-Director Denise Park was invited to testify before the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging.
This is the Center's ultimate goal: to provide concrete information to the American public and health professionals on how to facilitate maintenance of a healthy mind.
Center History
Denise Park has been the recipient of Edward R. Roybal Center grants from 1993-1998, and from 1998-2003. The Center was initially awarded to the University of Georgia in 1993 with Dr. Park as director, and was then transferred to the University of Michigan when Dr. Park moved there. The Center has been located at UIUC since September, 2002. Throughout the Center's existence, it has included a consortium relationship with the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The Center has had two themes. The 1993-1998 Center was focused on the broad topic of applied cognitive aging, and the recent Center has been more narrowly focused on the theme of medical information processing. In the last funding period, the Center had two research components. One component, directed by Denise Park, was focused specifically on investigating the role of automatic processes and environmental cues in guiding medical decision-making and cognition. The second component, directed by Wendy Rogers and Dan Fisk at the Georgia Institute of Technology, focused on human factors research on information and instructional design for the use of glucose monitors and warning systems for older adults, using principled design procedures that would generalize to a wide range of medical phenomena.
Before the Center moved to the University of Illinois, Park, Rogers and Fisk published more than 50 papers in the previous funding
period. Particularly notable are publications on medication adherence that involved testing in the field (Park and colleagues), studies on the role of automatic processes in remembering medical information (Park, Schwartz, and Skurnik), and human factors data on instructional design for medical systems for older adults (Rogers, Fisk, and colleagues). Center investigators have also published some major theoretical papers that have been important in shaping new directions in use-inspired basic research, as well as theoretically-driven applied cognitive aging research. Finally, Denise Park and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan published a highly successful book entitled Cognitive Aging: A Primer, that has a strong use-inspired and applied focus, including chapters on applied cognitive aging, decision making, collecting survey data from older adults, and effects of time of day on cognition. The book has been translated into Spanish (10,000 copies sold in Spanish) and has recently been released in Japanese translation with a major publisher. Center project directors also were awarded a total of eight NIA grants excluding the Center, as well as five grants from other sources, for a total of 13 projects totaling $9,263,567. Denise Park has trained five postdoctoral fellows in the past funding period.
The Center has always had a seed grant program from its inception. Given the number of institutions involved, it was a modest program in terms of dollars awarded, but the impact of the program was substantial. Over the past 10 years, the Center has awarded 49 seed grants to faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. The total cost of the program was approximately $2,480 per grant. Over 26 publications have resulted from these awards, and at least 18 grants that have been awarded to seed grantees relate to aging.
Center researchers have played an important role in education the public with research findings about the aging mind, medication adherence, and technology use, publicized in many national forums. These include the New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the AARP magazine, CNN, National Public Radio, and an NSF-sponsored PBS television program on the aging mind. Researchers trained in applied cognitive aging have also taken corporate jobs or started their own firms. Roger Morrell has his own consulting firm and is Director of Research for GeroTech Corporation. Regini Colonia founded Practical Intelligence at Work, a consulting firm. Tonya Watson is President and CEO of Business Consulting Division of Senior Services. Melissa Zwahr works for Calber Associates conducting program evaluation work.
Over its lifetime, the Center has organized five international conferences, each resulting in a published volume. Important volumes include books on skill acquisition and aging, medical information processing, self-report and aging, human factors interventions and health, communication and aging, and the social psychology of medical adherence.
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