- CLINICAL CORE The Clinical Core will establish and maintain a cohort of extensively characterized individuals who have volunteered to participate in research projects addressing brain aging and dementia. In addition to serving the national NIA mandates related to Alzheimer?s disease, Clinical Core resources will be distributed and adjusted to support intramural research programs investigating the heterogeneity of cognitive aging and dementia, as reflected in the themes of unusually successful brain aging (SuperAging) and non-amnestic dementias (e.g., primary progressive aphasia). The emphasis on Alzheimer?s disease will shift to earlier and pre-symptomatic stages with a view toward prevention trials. The SuperAging projects will explore factors that promote resilience to aging-related involutional changes and resistance to the emergence of Alzheimer pathology. The primary progressive aphasia program will help to clarify the biological diversity of Alzheimer?s disease and the principles of selective vulnerability in focal brain neurodegeneration. In the next five years, the Clinical Core will support the following goals: 1. Maintain a diverse cohort of 500 research participants that will include cognitively healthy persons with or without subjective complaints of memory impairment and individuals with different forms of amnestic and non- amnestic deficits. These subjects will be characterized by the Uniform Data Set (UDS), followed annually, and committed to research participation, tissue donation and contribution to national collaborations through NACC, ADCS, ADGC, NCRAD, and ADNI. 2. Emphasize the recruitment of study participants for areas of research where the Northwestern ADC enjoys a national leadership role, such as SuperAging, primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and other dementias caused by frontotemporal diseases. 3. Promote the ?therapeutic encounter? theme of the ADC through the support of innovative non- pharmacologic interventions that target unique person-specific symptom profiles. 4. Sustain a training approach that capitalizes on the multidisciplinary ?centerness? of the Northwestern ADC and that serves the mission of the Research Education Component through the cultivation of an environment where trainees from different disciplines (basic and cognitive science, neurology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, social work, and neuroimaging) train together in contiguous space.
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