Thank you for joining us for Research 411, a talk show focused on sharing best practices and trending research topics delivered by professional staff and prominent UT Dallas researchers from various disciplines.

Dr. Denise C. Park, Distinguished University Chair in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, joined the UT Dallas faculty in 2008. She is the Founding Director of the Center for Vital Longevity, and is presently Director of Research at the Center. Professor Park is a pioneer in understanding normal aging and how the mind changes with age. She is particularly interested in determining how cognitively-normal adults transition to cognitive frailty as they get older, and in isolating a neural footprint during middle age that predicts who will age well cognitively and who will not. To address these issues, she directs the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, which has tracked brain/behavior changes in adults of all ages for the past 12 years. She has also developed novel adult learning environments to assess whether challenging new activities can enhance cognitive vitality and delay brain aging. Dr. Park has also conducted extensive research in cultural neuroscience to understand how different environments and social values affect brain and behavior in both old and young adults.

Flanking Dr. Denise Park to discuss her research on the very earliest stages of Alzheimer’s Disease is Dr. Joseph Hennessee, Research Associate at the Center for Vital Longevity.