Healthy Minds Volunteer Corps

The University of Southern California needs help investigating how aging affects thinking and emotion and what can be done to maintain healthy minds as we age.

Description:
The Healthy Minds Volunteer Corps is a group of volunteers ages 18-100 who are interested in helping USC researchers complete their various projects by participating in studies. Here is a list of the USC Healthy Minds faculty members and brief descriptions of what their projects focus on:

• Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio: The normal structure of the human brain; brain function during the experience of emotion, musical performance and decision making
• Gerald Davison: Positive emotions like happiness and life satisfaction in older adults
• Margaret Gatz: Risk and protective factors for cognition and dementia
• Bob Knight: Emotion and thinking and aging
• Mara Mather: Age differences in decision making and emotional memory/learning
• Margaret McLaughlin: Using computer games to enhance older adults' cognitive functioning
• Thomas Parsons: Computerized neuropsychological testing in aging and the impact of cognitive problems on activities of daily living
• Albert Rizzo: Using Virtual Reality to measure and train cognitive and motor abilities in older adults
• Lon Schneider: Clinical studies of Alzheimer's Disease
• Bosco Tjan: Vision of older adults and image-enhancement technologies
• David Walsh: Age differences in decision making and beliefs
• Elizabeth Zelinski: Cognition, memory and language comprehension in older adults
  
  

These studies typically involve completing various cognitive tasks and answering questionnaires; a few of them also use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity while people complete cognitive tasks. Some studies pay volunteers a stipend for their time; others involve unpaid volunteers. Some of the studies only involve older participants, but many of the studies also include younger and middle-aged adults in order to compare cognitive processes across different age groups.

History:

Contact people:

Lin Nga, Office Manager, (phone), (email) Andrej Schoeke, Assistant, (phone), (email)

Main office number: (213) 740-9543

Address:

USC Andrus Gerontology Center 3715 McClintock Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90089 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.usc.edu/dept/gero/participate/

Directions:

We provide free on-campus parking for our volunteers. If you're coming in from LA Union Station, there is a free tram that will bring you to USC.

Last updated on May 13, 2010