Principal Investigator: Denise Park
Title: Champaign Center for Healthy Minds
Web address: www.centerforhealthyminds.org
Contact e-mail: denisep@uiuc.edu
What happens to people’s minds when they get older? This is a question with no single answer or explanation. After decades of dedicated research, we know much more today about how to maintain physical health as we age. Today, research on the aging mind is sufficiently well-developed so that it is possible to develop a blueprint for behaviors that aging Americans may engage in to maintain cognitive health. But there is still plenty of uncharted territory when it comes to mapping out ways that will help us can keep our minds healthy, functional and thriving into late adulthood. Located within the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Center for Healthy Minds links a cadre of researchers who are well-positioned to seek answers to the question of what conditions and interventions maintain or increase cognitive health with age. Center for Healthy Minds is truly an interdisciplinary effort, with contributors from psychology, kinesiology, education and aviation. Center researchers study the aging brain by employing older adult volunteer subjects. Many projects involve the use of cutting edge technology, including fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and eye-tracking equipment.