Click here to access the UCSF Department of Neurology's event information for the Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 lecture.

Kristine Yaffe, MD
My Adventure in Psychiatry and Neurology: It's the same brain!

Educational objectives:

• Describe how psychiatry and neurology are increasingly sharing training and goals
• Summarize the life course framework for brain health research
• Review the most promising evidence for modifiable risk factors of dementia and brain health

Dr. Yaffe is an internationally recognized expert in the epidemiology of dementia and cognitive aging and the foremost leader in identifying modifiable risk factors for dementia. Her research, currently supported by over a dozen NIH, Department of Defense, VA, and foundation grants, bridges the fields of neurology, psychiatry, and epidemiology. Dr. Yaffe was the first to determine that potentially 30% of dementia risk is preventable. She pioneered early investigations on the roles of estrogen, physical activity, and cardiovascular factors in dementia risk, and more recently, her research group has led work on the connections between cognitive aging and sleep disorders, traumatic brain injury, and lifecourse exposures. Her work has formed the cornerstone for dementia prevention trials worldwide. Dr. Yaffe received the Potamkin Prize for Alzheimer’s Research in 2017 and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019. In 2021, she received the Robert S. Gordon, Jr. Award in Epidemiology from the National Institutes for Health. In addition to her positions at UCSF, Dr. Yaffe is the Chief of NeuroPsychiatry and the Director of the Memory Evaluation Clinic at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System.