Dr. Bruce L. Miller, director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, has led groundbreaking work with the NFL to help with the education and assessment of players suffering from symptoms of concussion – an issue that has recently gained critical attention from football fans across the country. Throughout his 30-year career, Dr. Miller’s extensive research on brain health and frontotemporal dementia has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune magazine and “PBS NewsHour” – now we’re thrilled to have him share some of his findings with us. Please listen to our conversation with Dr. Miller and learn about his research on concussions as well as brain health issues impacting millions of Americans. 

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USAgainstAlzheimer's guest for this Alzheimer's Talks is Dr. Howard Fillit, Founding Executive Director and Chief Science Officer at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. He and his colleagues at ADDF are rapidly accelerating the discovery of drugs to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. His team has assessed more than 100 suggested therapy ideas and recently started sharing evaluations and prevention strategies – like routine exercise or supplements – with the public via www.CognitiveVitality.org.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota joined us at the top of the call to discuss her work in the Senate to stop Alzheimer’s. We then spoke with Olivia Mastry, executive director of ACT on Alzheimer’s, which has helped 32 communities around Minnesota take steps to become “dementia-friendly.” ACT on Alzheimer’s is a collaborative of 60 public and private organizations and hundreds of individuals. They have developed resources that any community can use to raise awareness and support both patients and caregivers.

For the first time, researchers have been able to replicate Alzheimer's outside of the brain – they're calling it "Alzheimer's in a Dish." This advancement will allow scientists and doctors to evaluate their experimental treatments and techniques that – until now – would have required human subjects for testing. This could speed up the research process and help us find a way to stop Alzheimer's faster. We're thrilled to have the head of that groundbreaking team, Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi of Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, on this Alzheimer's Talks.

With the recently launched Brain Health Registry, Dr. Weiner and his team have built a tool to help speed up the search for a cure. They invite participants to take online cognitive assessments – very much like brain games – to gauge brain health, show how brains change over time, and help identify the best subjects for upcoming clinical trials.