Leaders at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have announced that the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center (VMAC), currently housed in the Department of Neurology, will become a freestanding institutional center.

Combining studies of genetically diverse mouse populations and human data led to the identification of a gene associated with cognitive decline and brain changes in Alzheimer’s disease.

With the aid of an $18.2 million, five-year grant renewal from the National Institute on Aging, the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project (VMAP) will advance interdisciplinary research into abnormal brain aging and cognitive decline in older adults, with continuing emphasis on the role of blood flow changes in the heart and brain.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) involves distinctive wasting away of certain brain regions, such that medical imaging of these regions can distinguish the disease from other subtypes of dementia.

Matthew Schrag, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Neurology, has received a Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging for research into the function of a novel protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease risk.

Enlarged perivascular spaces, which are commonly seen on brain MRIs in older adults, have important associations with worse cognitive performance, particularly information processing speed and executive function, according to a new study that challenges historical consideration that perivascular spaces are a harmless imaging marker.

Greater aortic stiffness is related to lower cerebral blood flow, especially among individuals with increased genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease, according to research from Vanderbilt University Medical Center.