Jenna Merenstein

RESEARCH:

In the Utah Cognition, Lifespan, and Multimodal Brain Imaging (U-CLIMB) Laboratory, we use advanced behavioral and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to study healthy cognitive aging and how this differs from Alzheimer’s disease. Most of us can readily bring to mind an older adult that we hold close to our hearts. We can all agree that we want these individuals to live a cognitively healthy life for as long as possible. This will become an increasing reality as future generations of older adults will regularly survive into the ninth and tenth decades of life. An unfortunate side effect of this increase in longevity, however, is the increased prevalence of dementia and cognitive impairment. And it’s not just about dementia. Even healthy adults exhibit some degree of cognitive decline across the lifespan, with decline in attention and memory abilities being the most common complaint. We aim to address this burgeoning global health concern by studying how age-related decline in these "fluid" cognitive abilities can be attributed to differences in MRI measures of brain structure and function. We study these properties in cognitively healthy older adults to characterize “normal” brain aging and how this differs from pathological aging-related processes. An additional goal of our work is to identify moderating factors that may contribute to cognitive and brain aging, such as environmental exposures, the role of genetics, and cardiovascular health. Our vision is that identifying targetable differences in brain structure and function will ultimately help inform future interventions aimed at delaying cognitive decline.
 

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