This application for a Clinical Mental Health Academic Award proposes a program to strengthen my academic abilities as a geriatric clinical neuropsychologist, to further develop my research program, enhance my teaching and supervision skills and to evolve into an Institutional resource contributing to the University of Virginia's overall efforts to build its emphasis in geriatric mental health. While the University of Virginia has a strong multi-disciplinary complement of professionals specializing in various subfields of aging, the University of Virginia is missing a neuropsychologist who specializes in mental disorders of aging. The proposed program is designed to provide me with the training necessary to fill the critical role of geriatric neuropsychologist at the University of Virginia. An additional aspect of this proposal is that it will prepare me to consolidate resources and increase collaboration In research, education and patient care in aging across the Departments of Neurology, Psychology, Internal Medicine, Psychiatric Medicine, and School of Nursing. Strengths of the applicant include demonstrated capability to do research, clinical work and teaching simultaneously, programmatic research with publications and extramural funding, interdisciplinary training, and a commitment to care of the aged. Institutional strengths include numerous resources to care for the aged and dedication to expanding those assets. The trainee's weaknesses include training in degenerative diseases and supervision from expert's in human memory and aging. This proposal includes course work, tutorials, independent studies, research and supervision by local and national experts designed to fortify strengths. and ameliorate weaknesses. The research plan outlined in this proposal is a logical extension of my research to date. My previous work has demonstrated that increased circulating glucose levels improve memory on long-term explicit tasks in healthy elderly and on a broader range of tasks in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease. The proposed research will examine other types of memory performance in healthy elderly people and another patient population group often suffering from memory impairment - Parkinson's disease patients. Types of memory to be examined include source memory, memory for faces, spatial memory and working memory. This work provides the unique opportunity to examine a potential memory facilitator and to further our understanding of the underlying cognitive and neurobiological structures of memory.
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