View Current Pre-Doctorial Trainee Profiles
Purpose
Our pre-doctoral students study aging and urban health, with a focus on functional independence, health and wellness. Students’ core disciplines include anthropology, economics, engineering, interdisciplinary studies, occupational therapy, psychology, and sociology. The training program prepares students for professional careers in aging research, with an expertise in urban health.
Focus
Our training program has four major foci, each designed to produce outstanding gerontological researchers:
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Apprenticed research opportunities, premised on regular, frequent contact with mentors in the context of a highly structured mentoring program that emphasizes interdisciplinary research. The research experience and training of our students pursues empirical demonstration of theoretically derived hypotheses concerning an array of health and aging issues. Thus, the trainees' projects involve recruitment of older adults from the surrounding communities. The participation of students in all facets of field operations establishes the presence of our training program in the community and creates ties with community organizations, health care facilities, senior centers, and other agencies. In this way, students gain first-hand knowledge of the challenges of aging. This experience further motivates pursuit of answers to the problems facing older urban Americans, their families and their health care providers.
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Specific disciplinary education, combined with multidisciplinary research training. Our faculty mentors include psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, occupational therapists, economists, nurses, and allied health professionals. Graduate training in both a traditional core discipline and in gerontology represents our philosophy for the best training graduate students can attain. The program at Wayne State University lives by this ideal, by having students and faculty connected to disciplinary homes and to a strong multidisciplinary gerontological research institute. Our training faculty reflect this integration; half have specific appointments within the Institute of Gerontology and half are appointed in various departments across campus. As a result, students in multiple fields are able then to combine their disciplinary knowledge, with their experience of faculty mentoring and peer support across disciplines, and create a synergistic gerontological research experience.
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Strong methodological emphasis. As part of their training, students are expected to take 12-15 credits in research and statistical methodologies particularly appropriate to the study of aging; many of these methods courses are taught by this program's training faculty. Later, a detailed outline is given of the courses available in methodology across disciplines.
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Urban health focus. In the context of their research collaboration in the Wayne State University gerontological research training, students will become experts in the recruitment and retention of urban research participants (particularly African American elders). Several institute studies, combined, currently enroll more than 1000 African American elders, and other studies focus on Native American elders. Virtually all Wayne State University gerontology studies are based in the Detroit metropolitan area, which is a rich and heterogeneous region, and is very amenable to enhancing the diversity and heterogeneity of research samples.
Required Activities
Required activities in the Training Program include:
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Attend Colloquia/Professional Development Seminars once a week
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Participate in Mentoring Team meetings (Develop goals for academic year in the fall and evaluation in the spring)
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Produce an average of one publication per year
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Serve on one IOG committee per year
Pre-doctoral Training Program in Aging and Health
Cognitive Neuroscience Track
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging Laboratory is led by Naftali Raz, Ph.D., an international expert in structural brain aging. The Raz Lab collects data on multiple indices of cognition, cardiovascular risk, genetics, and MRI, including MPRAGE, diffusion-tensor (DTI), susceptibility-weighted (SWI), and fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR). All research studies address the pre-eminent question of inter-individual differences in cognitive aging, considering cardiovascular health, genetics, sex, and neural modifiers.
Current projects include:
Spatial Navigation and Spatial Memory
Using standardized cognitive recall and virtual environment navigation indices, we measure age-related change in spatial navigation.
Subcortical Non-Heme Iron Accumulation
Non-heme iron is a posited factor in aging suggested by oxidative stress theories. We examine changes in non-heme iron across the lifespan.
Age-related White Matter Hyperintensities (WMH)
White matter hyperintensities (WMH) refer to signal hyperintensity on T2-weighted or fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) MRI. We investigate the cross-sectional difference and longitudinal change of WMH, the role of vascular risk factors, and cognitive consequences.
Neural Correlates and Modifiers of Episodic Memory
Older age is associated with disproportionate declines in memory for associations between items (e.g., pairs of words). Much of our recent episodic memory and aging research is focused on investigating this phenomenon.
Graduate students in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging Laboratory acquire a wide range of research skills including: computer-aided processing and analysis of MRI images, design and administration of cognitive and neuropsychological tests and statistical analysis. Our neuroimaging projects are conducted at the Wayne State University MRI Center in collaboration with E. Mark Haacke, Ph.D. On graduation, students secure post-doctoral training at other distinguished aging laboratories, win federally funded research grants of their own, and gain employment as academics and researchers.
For more information contact:
Dr. Naftali Raz (Email: n.raz@wayne.edu) or the Co-Directors of the IOG’s Pre-doctoral Training Program in Aging and Health: Dr. Peter Lichtenberg: p.lichtenberg@wayne.edu and Dr. Cathy Lysack: c.lysack@wayne.ed