Brain Health Matters! Lecture Series 2021

LISA GENOVA is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Every Note Played. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. She travels worldwide speaking about the neurological diseases she writes about and has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Today, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and NPR. Her TED talk, “What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s,” has been viewed more than five million times. REMEMBER is her first work of nonfiction.

In REMEMBER, acclaimed, bestselling author and neuroscientist, Lisa Genova, brings her vivid storytelling skills to explore what it means to remember, why forgetting is completely normal—and potentially useful, and what we can do to retail the memories that matter most. Readers learn about how memories are made, why we forget, and how factors like sleep, stress, emotion, and context can improve or impair memory formation, storage, and retrieval. Whether you are worried about early signs of Alzheimer’s or you are a student hoping to score an A on tomorrow’s test, REMEMBER is an accessible, reassuring, and transformational resource for anyone looking to understand how memory works, how to improve and protect it, and why forgetting is a normal part of being human.

The Brain Health Initiative (BHI) is a cutting-edge, new approach to protecting brain health, optimizing brain performance, and fighting brain illness across the lifespan. The BHI is a collaborative effort with Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital, to build brain healthy communities through education, collaboration, research, innovation, and action, with a specific focus on brain health promotion, prevention, early detection, evidence-based intervention, and optimization of performance. The BHI is creating a culture that promotes brain health protective factors and decreases risk factors, thereby improving brain health and optimizing brain performance outcomes for the Florida Suncoast region and beyond. Join the Be Brain Healthy movement because brain health matters, and lifestyle makes a difference.

The Brain Health Scholar program is a competitive appointment open to high school and college student leaders (16 years or older) who participate in a youth program or attend a private or public school within the greater Suncoast region or a BHI associated college or university. An authorized representative of a collaborating organization will nominate identified student leader(s). The qualified candidate(s) should have an interest in science, medicine, and/or health and well-being.

The position requires about 25 hours of commitment per term. Scholars work with the Brain Health Initiative in its effort to promote and protect brain health, prevent and fight brain illness, and improve performance for all ages throughout the Suncoast region. Specifically, Scholars work alongside Brain Health Initiative scientists and clinicians and help carry out the community engagement, research, and innovation agenda with the Brain Health Initiative to better understand and take action on the brain health and well-being concerns, values, priorities, and attitudes of both youth and adults. Brain Health Scholars  receive a certificate of participation that can be included in their college application portfolio.

The certificate also documents their service hours contributing to this unique opportunity to assist in the work of the Brain Health Initiative, an effort supported, in part, by Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital. Senior High School Brain Health Scholars may request a letter of introduction from Dr. Peabody to their top 3 choice college admission offices. All scholars may request a letter of support for scholarship applications.