UC Berkeley was awarded a five-year grant expected to total $47 million from the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) to incorporate advanced brain imaging into an Alzheimer’s Association-led study to explore whether lifestyle changes can protect memory in those at risk of developing dementia.
UC Berkeley was awarded a five-year grant expected to total $47 million from the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) to incorporate advanced brain imaging into an Alzheimer’s Association-led study to explore whether lifestyle changes can protect memory in those at risk of developing dementia.
The expanded study will be the first large-scale investigation of how lifestyle interventions, which include exercise, diet, cognitive stimulation and health coaching, affect well-known biological markers of Alzheimer’s and dementia in the brain.
“A healthy diet and lifestyle are generally recognized as good for health, but this study is the first large randomized controlled trial to look at whether lifestyle changes actually influence Alzheimer’s disease-related brain changes,” said Susan Landau, a research neuroscientist at Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and principal investigator of the add-on study.
The U.S. study to Protect brain health through lifestyle Intervention to Reduce risk (U.S. POINTER) is a two-year, $35 million Alzheimer’s Association-sponsored multisite clinical trial designed to test whether healthy diet, physical activity, and social and intellectual challenge can protect thinking and memory in older adults.
Read more at: University of California Berkeley
The new funding will add positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the upcoming U.S. POINTER study, which will explore how lifestyle changes affect memory and thinking in older adults. (Photo Credit: UC Berkeley photo by Malachi Tran)
