Gualala Arts Lecture Series presents:
Healthy Aging and The Brain

with Susan Marie Landau
Monday, November 3, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
$5 donation requested

Gualala Arts will host a lecture by Susan Landau on memory loss and the aging brain on Monday, November 3 at 7:00 p.m. A $5 donation is requested.

There are several types of memory processing, and each shows different patterns of change across the lifespan. Susan will talk about changes in memory that occur during healthy aging and discuss how these are different from changes seen in Alzheimer's disease.

In addition, recent neuroscience research using PET and MRI imaging has made a great deal of progress in understanding brain changes that occur during memory loss. She will also talk about these studies, and describe current evidence for risk factors and protective factors related to dementia.

About Susan Landau

Susan Landau, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley studying healthy aging, neurodegenerative disease, and brain imaging in the laboratory of William Jagust, M.D.

In her research she uses brain imaging techniques (MRI and PET scanning) to understand brain and memory function. She has presented her work at a variety of conferences, including Human Brain Mapping and Society for Neuroscience, and she has given recent talks at the Veteran's Affairs Hospitals in Palo Alto, Martinez, and San Francisco.

Susan received a B.A. in Psychology from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she became interested in brain function and changes in cognition across the lifespan. Her research on these topics led to her undergraduate honors thesis, "Verbal Fluency and Implicit Attitudes in Young and Old Adults," which was awarded the Walkley Prize for Original Research in 1999.

She attended UC Berkeley as a graduate student in psychology, where she received a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. Her graduate work focused on the question of how the brain changes flexibly and allows us to acquire new skills with practice. In order to study this question, she carried out experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that makes it possible to examine changes in brain activation. One experiment compared brain activation in pianists and non-pianist participants while they performed a motor sequence task (Landau et al., Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 2006).

In her spare time, Susan enjoys playing the piano, yoga, jogging, and hiking along the California coast. She has visited Sea Ranch several times and has great respect for the community and its preservation of the natural beauty of the landscape.

The Gualala Arts Center, located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, CA,
is open weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and weekends from noon to 4:00 p.m.
Please call (707) 884-1138 for more information, or email info@gualalaarts.org.

Serving the coastal communities of northern Sonoma & southern Mendocino Counties.