Two UNMC community members were honored recently for their research into Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions related to aging.
Jyothi Arikkath, Ph.D., assistant professor of developmental neuroscience in the Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation, received the Oldfield Award while Bradley Witbrodt, M.D., received the Nancy and Ronald Reagan Alzheimer’s Scholarship Fund Award.
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| Jyothi Arikkath, Ph.D. |
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| Bradley Witbrodt, M.D. |
Checking out the circuits
Dr. Arikkath studies the molecular mechanisms that regulate neuronal structure and plasticity to understand how these mechanisms influence neural circuit formation and function.
Research shows that aberrant neural circuit formation and /or function underlies the pathology of a number of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Identifying core components of these pathways would provide better tools for therapeutic intervention.
Another use for cell phones
Dr. Witbrodt — who last weekend graduated from the College of Medicine — uses cellular telephones to measure activity, life-space and time-budgets in community dwelling adults.
The goal is to develop and deploy a mobile health monitoring system that can be used to gather real-time data on patients in the community and report it back to a central data collection site, where it can be analyzed for clinically relevant outcomes.
Dr. Witbrodt has helped write the code and validate and test the system, which is a larger project under the auspices of assistant geriatrics professor Stephen Bonasera, M.D., Ph.D.
About the awards
The late Col. Barney Oldfield established the Oldfield Award in honor of his wife, Vada Kinman Oldfield, who battled Alzheimer’s for 11 years.
The Kinman-Oldfield Family Foundation established the Reagan award to honor the late president who battled Alzheimer’s for 10 years.