Memory disorders
Newsletter offers help for memory disorders
Archived article from Feb 18, 2000
By Douglas Frank
Is it possible to tell if you or someone you know has early Alzheimer's disease? Does ginkgo biloba improve memory? What's it like to have suffered a traumatic brain injury?
These and other topical questions are addressed in a new quarterly newsletter, Memory Loss and the Brain, launched this month by the Memory Disorders Project at Rutgers-Newark.
Aimed at the general population, the newsletter will also be circulated to clinicians, neurologists, geriatric specialists and general practitioners in the tri-state area who deal with aging and memory problems.
"We are hoping they will pass the newsletter along to patients or leave it in their waiting rooms," said one of the project's co-directors, Catherine Myers, assistant research professor in the department of psychology on the Newark campus.
"We also hope to reach people affiliated with patient groups in brain injuries, epilepsy and Alzheimer's in order to attract such people to get involved in the center's research. And of course we will send it to governmental funding agencies and foundations to seek financial support," she said.
The newsletter is one of several activities of the project, which also conducts memory research with various collaborators such as the Aging and Dementia Research Center at New York University Medical Center and the Kessler Medical Research, Rehabilitation and Education Corporation in West Orange.
Supported by the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, the newsletter is being produced by Myers and Mark Gluck, director of the memory project and associate professor in the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, who say they intend to disseminate the publication free of charge four times a year. Myers is serving as editor-in-chief and Gluck is senior editor.
"We started the newsletter because people are inundated with a lot of information in the media about memory loss and Alzheimer's disease and what you should expect when you get older," said Myers.
"There are many claims about treatments being 'clinically proven,' but what does that mean?" she asked. "It's very hard for anyone to sort through all the technical journals and medical/clinical studies to figure out what's going on." One of the goals of the newsletter is to summarize the state of findings in the field for the average person, she said.
Persons seeking a free subscription can write to Memory Disorders Project, Newsletter Subscription, 197 University Avenue, Newark campus; telephone ext. 1080 x3294; or consult the memory project's home page at www.memory.rutgers.edu or www.gluck.edu/memory and click there for a subscription to the newsletter.
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