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Seeking Better Brain Health Precision Aging Network to Research How Brains Age
PHOTOS BY BRENT G. MATHIS
By Loni Nannini Future prescriptions for better brain health are what the University of Arizona hopes to generate from its a five-year, $60 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The goal of the grant is to create the Precision Aging Network and develop interventional strategies that will potentially revolutionize aging globally. UArizona will lead research institutions nationwide in the effort. Carol Barnes, a UArizona Regents Professor of psychology, neurology and neuroscience, is principal investigator for the project. “When the study is finished, my dream is to develop algorithms to identify different groups of people who can benefit in very specific ways from prescriptions developed by the Precision Aging Network based on genetics, environment, lifestyle and other variables,” Barnes said. “We want to give people
specific actions they can take to help maintain brain health and participate in their own brain-health outcomes. If we can bring these prescriptions to patients during well visits with doctors, it will be wonderful for patient quality of life as well as for healthcare systems, communities and economies.” Barnes is a renown pioneer in the field of cognitive aging research and is the director of the UArizona Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. She views UArizona’s leadership role in the network as affirmation of four decades of work and a testament to the talent of its researchers. Barnes will oversee teams from the UArizona College of Science and other colleges and institutes across campus, along with network members from Arizona State University, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Baylor College of Medicine, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Miami and the Phoenixbased Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope. “This is the largest study on cognition with the most geographically diverse population in U.S. history. It will take into account populations from rural and urban areas, as well as different socioeconomic statuses, races and ethnicities, educational levels, and ages,” said Barnes. For longitudinal studies, parCarol Barnes ticipants ages 18 years and older UArizona Regents Professor of will be recruited and tracked Psychology, Neurology & Neuroscience throughout their life spans to College of Science discover factors that impact cogUniversity of Arizona nitive changes. “This will allow us to see the
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trajectory of the aging process, and whether it is a healthy trajectory or shows faster decline. If we understand those variables for individuals and groups of individuals, we may be able to help modify changes in cognition with age,” said Barnes. The rich data set will provide the foundation for the Precision Aging Network, which takes its name from the concept that medicine can be precisely tailored to individuals’ genetics, environments and lifestyles. “Traditionally we take a one-size-fitsall view of aging and assume that everyone is the same, but that is not true,” said Lee Ryan, head of the UArizona Department of Psychology and an associate director of the Precision Aging Network. “Men age differently than women, and I age differently than you. We want to try to understand these differences and take an individualized approach to interventions.” While much is unknown about the aging of the brain, one certainty is that it is incredibly intricate. “There are so many individual factors that interact in complex ways – from physical health and disease factors to lifestyle and genetics. That is why we need large samples of people for the study,” Ryan said. A key component of gathering data is the MindCrowd research project (mindcrowd.org), an online testing website launched by TGen in 2013 to study human memory and risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. For the Precision Aging Network, the MindCrowd portal has been expanded to include additional tests and surveys that provide extensive information on study participants. continued on page 162 >>> www.BizTucson.com