UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Nancy Dennis, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State, will give a lecture, titled "Tailoring Memory Making," at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 1 in the Ruth Pike Auditorium, 22 Biobehavioral Health Building.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is part of the 2013 Healthy Aging Lecture Series sponsored by the Penn State Center for Healthy Aging, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Penn State, Foxdale Village, the Village at Penn State and Mount Nittany Medical Center. An open house, including coffee and snacks, will take place at 9:45 a.m. prior to the talk.
Dennis' talk will focus on how memory systems evolve as people age and how researchers study this evolution to gain clarity in the processes underlying age-related changes in memory performance. The lecture will make the connection between research findings and everyday living, and answer questions, such as "What happens to memories?" and "How do people retrieve memories as they age?"
Dennis' research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support learning and memory in young and older adults. She uses both behavioral and neuroimaging methods, including diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional MRI (fMRI) to explore the interaction of cognitive and neural processes involved in episodic memory. With respect to cognitive aging, her research concentrates on the examination of age-related neural markers of cognitive decline, as well as mechanisms for neural compensation.
Dennis earned a doctorate degree in psychology at the Catholic University of America in 2004. She joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Penn State in 2008.
To learn more about the lecture, go to: http://healthyaging.psu.edu/healthy-aging-lecture-series-0.