News Release

$3.4 million grant awarded to help older people stay mobile

Grant and Award Announcement

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

March 17, 2011 – (BRONX, NY) – The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $3.4 million grant to Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, both affiliated with Yeshiva University, to identify cognitive factors that influence mobility in older people – in particular, those that could be modified to help older people remain active.

"Mobility limitations and disability in aging are major public health concerns," said Roee Holtzer, Ph.D., principal investigator for the study and associate professor in the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology at Einstein and associate professor of psychology at Ferkauf. "We will recruit 450 people age 70 and older for baseline and annual follow-ups over the five-year study period."

Participants enrolled in the National Institute on Aging grant will undergo clinical, neuropsychological and physical exams as well as state-of-the art cognitive and neuroimaging assessments. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology, developed by the optical engineering group at Drexel University, will be used to assess changes in brain function during various walking conditions. "Ideally, these assessments will reveal specific cognitive abilities and brain structures and functions that correlate with mobility problems or that predict their occurrence," said Dr. Holtzer. "Then we want to see whether efforts to modify those factors, which include the ability to concentrate and allocate attention resources to competing task demands, can help in preventing mobility decline and disability in these individuals."

The project, which began in March, is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving Einstein's neurology and epidemiology & population health departments and its Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center; Yeshiva University's Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology; and the optical engineering group at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

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About Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2009-2010 academic year, Einstein is home to 722 M.D. students, 243 Ph.D.students, 128 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and approximately 350 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has 2,775 fulltime faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2009, Einstein received more than $155 million in support from the NIH. This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Through its extensive affiliation network involving five medical centers in the Bronx, Manhattan and Long Island - which includes Montefiore Medical Center, The University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for Einstein - the College of Medicine runs one of the largest post-graduate medical training programs in the United States, offering approximately 150 residency programs to more than 2,500 physicians in training. For more information, please visit www.einstein.yu.edu


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