Maintaining our brain health and cognitive abilities is critical to being able to live fully and independently as we age. Recent investigations show there is much we can do proactively to keep our minds sharp.

Medcan is proud to present an exclusive guest speaker: Dr. Michelle Carlson from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Dr. Carlson is a research leader in the field of risk factors and modifiers of cognitive and functional aging and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Carlson’s most recent investigations examine the brain health benefits of physical activity in comparison to similar activities that also involve social interaction. She uses wearable technology to show that 100 steps indoors may not be equivalent to 100 steps outdoors in spatially and socially complex community spaces such as malls, religious centers and spaces that socially engage.

Join us for this Medcan-exclusive online seminar to learn from Dr. Carlson’s work which suggests that specific types social activity may confer benefits to cognitive and brain health that are as great as exercise.

This seminar has already occurred. Related article and video posted here.

Speaker biography: Michelle C. Carlson, PhD

Dr. Carlson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (SPH) in Baltimore, Maryland, core faculty member in the Center on Aging and Health at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, and holds joint appointments in the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and the School of Nursing.

She has published 120 papers examining risk factors and behavioural and pharmacologic modifiers of cognitive and functional aging and Alzheimer’s disease.  She has been continuously funded by NIA, NHLBI, NCCAM, the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, AARP and other foundations to examine environmental and pharmacologic risk modifiers of cognitive aging and dementia.

Dr. Carlson leads these investigations using both observational studies, such as the Women’s Health and Aging Study II (WHAS II) and the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), and pharmacologic and behavioral intervention trials. She currently serves as the Johns Hopkins site principal investigator (PI) of the CHS study, now in its 28^th year.

Dr. Carlson has 17 years of randomized, controlled trial (RCT) leadership, having served as Johns Hopkins site PI of the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory (GEMS) RCT, and project leadership on the P01-funded Baltimore Experience Corps Trial (BECT) to evaluate the impact of senior service in elementary schools on older adults’ cognitive, functional, and brain health (Project 1 leader).

In 2006-2013, Dr. Carlson designed and led a nested Brain Health Substudy (BHS) to evaluate the mechanisms through which the Experience Corps (EC) Program impacted older adults’ health using neuroimaging and accelerometery. Dr. Carlson is using smartphones to more precisely measure the roles of daily social and functional activity in the maintenance of cognitive and brain health.  Through this work, Dr. Carlson seeks to develop scalable methods to help individuals and their caregivers monitor and maintain socially and cognitively enriching activities in daily life as a means of buffering the brain and aging in place. She currently serves on the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s Cognitive Vitality Advisory Board and on the Global Council on Brain Health as a member of an expert panel focused on social engagement and cognitive health.