Center for Vital Longevity Mission
The Center for Vital Longevity is a research center focused on understanding and expanding the capacity of the aging mind. Center researchers use cutting edge brain imaging technologies and advances in cognitive science to understand (a) how the brain changes from young to old adulthood; (b) the consequences of neural aging for everyday function; and (c) what interventions show promise for slowing cognitive aging. |
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Center Director
Denise Park, Ph.D. focuses her research program on understanding how the mind changes and adapts as we age. She is interested not only in the function of the mind and brain, but in determining whether stimulation can maintain the health of the aging brain. She is also focusing on isolating a "neural signature" of middle-aged adults who will age with vitality versus those who are at greater risk of less adaptive cognitive aging. She recently moved from the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas, where she directs the Center for Vital Longevity and holds the University Distinguished Chair in Behavioral and Brain Sciences and is a University of Texas Regents Research Scholar. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; received the American Psychological Association's award for Distinguished Contributions to the Psychology of Aging, and recently served on the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Society. She has an NIH Merit Award for her research and also directs an NIA Roybal Translational Research Center on Aging. She has chaired, in the past, the NIMH study section on the Mental Disorders of Aging and most recently chaired the NIH Cognition and Perception Study Section. |
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In The News |
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For more coverage of the center, see our Press Page |
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