Join Gaelle Doucet, PhD, director of the Brain Architecture, Imaging and Cognition Laboratory at the Boys Town Institute for Human Neuroscience, as she discusses the changes our brains will experience as we age.
This Science Café will be held in-person at 7 p.m. on April 4 at the Slowdown, 729 N. 14th St.
“It is clear that people do not age at the same rate,” Dr. Doucet said.
“Scientists are still trying to understand why there are differences amongst individuals, but factors such as physical activity and education seem to play a significant role in these changes,” she said.
For the last 10 years, Dr. Doucet’s research interests have involved the investigation of the brain’s architecture and its relationship to cognition in health and disease. She is a cognitive neuroscientist with expertise in functional MRI and particularly on resting-state fMRI. Her research has involved the use of multimodal MRI to characterize the brain functional organization, and she has applied this technology to answering questions about the impacts of disease on brain functional organization.
Prior to joining Boys Town National Research Hospital, Dr. Doucet was an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She has been awarded a grant from the National Institute on Aging to identify the brain networks in aging populations.
“This work aims to provide the first reliable brain functional atlas for older adults. By mapping the brain networks underlying late adulthood, this work has the potential to elucidate how dysfunction of the brain networks contributes to neurodegenerative conditions,” Dr. Doucet said.
Dr. Doucet is expanding this research by focusing on age-related changes in brain activity and cognition from childhood to late adulthood.
Science Cafés involve a conversation with an expert about current science topics. They are open to everyone. Each meeting is organized around an interesting topic of conversation. Experts give a brief presentation followed by a Q&A period.
Yea!!! We are very excited that you will be back at the Slowdown. Plan to see both of us that night. Thank you.