Project summary
The Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging has been awarded to Dr. Gillian Einstein to enhance women’s brain health through the study of cognitive aging and associated disorders.
This initiative is guided by three principles:
- Sex & gender: That biological differences (sex) and social position (gender) both affect brain health, requiring integrated projects;
- Brain, body, environment: That the brain is not autonomous; it responds to and integrates other body processes and is sensitive in turn to the outside world, including changes induced by cultural (gendered) practices; and
- Life process: That brain health, especially in aging, is a result of accumulating life-long processes involving diverse interacting factors.
Using these principles, the Chair will implement integrated programs of research, mentoring and education and knowledge translation (KT):
Research – Brain-imaging, neuropsychological testing, and qualitative interviews of women post-oophorectomy will clarify the importance of estrogens for women’s brain health and build on other projects on women’s brain health in the Einstein lab.
Mentoring and education – The Chair will support graduate and undergraduate research training, yearly graduate research awards, a student-run conference on women’s brain health, and lecturing on women’s brain health.
Knowledge translation (KT) – The Chair will promote understanding of the importance of women’s brain health across scientific, professional and public communities. This will include engaging community advisory groups, partners and advisors, and community fora to disseminate research results through national and international channels. An arts-based initiative will include an exhibition of women’s poetry, body maps, and artists’ representations of women’s brain health.
The work of the Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging is guided and supported by two expert advisory committees:
Scientific Advisory Committee
- Jill M. Goldstein, Professor of Psychiatry & Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director of Research, Connors Center for Women’s Health & Gender Biology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- David M. Holtzman, Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor, and Chair of the Department of Neurology, Washington University
- John H. Morrison, Professor of Neurology, University of California, Davis, and Director, California National Primate Research Center
- Susan M. Resnick, Senior Investigator, Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health
KT Advisory Committee
- Andrea Charise, Assistant Professor of Health Studies, University of Toronto
- Denise Gastaldo, Associate Professor of Nursing, University of Toronto
- Catherine Richards, Professor of Media Arts, Department of Visual Arts, University of Ottawa
- Dr. Londa Schiebinger, John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, Stanford University