6.2 What does Ángel do in a typical day?
Ángel works every day on the San Antonio Heart and Mind Study, which follows up with participants from the San Antonio Heart Study conducted in the 1990s. That study found that factors such as blood pressure and diabetes were associated with mental impairment. The current continuation project furthers this research, especially given the inclusion of MRIs and PET scans, which seek to understand how we can reduce Amyloid and Tau in the brains, the proteins that are involved in dementia. Ángel and his team are also exploring the role of physical activity in brain health. Does greater physical activity help maintain healthier brain health, and is the same effect found in Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations?
So what are some of Ángel’s duties like at work as he tries to answer these questions?
Transcript: “So, what I do in a normal day, I help leading the San Antonio Heart and Mind Study, which is a study that brings back participants from older, um, heart-related studies. So we have been trying to track them and invite them back to this new study that we have developed and, uh, execute a different kind of testing. Memory-based testing, observational testing, uh, physical/neurological testing, and also heart assessments. We also give them the opportunity to complete MRIs, PET scans, or spinal taps–all of them are optional, of course. Um, the goal of the study is to understand, uh, from the previous studies to now, what has changed. What has made someone prone to probably develop dementia, or what has made someone protected from getting dementia. Um, while I’m not doing, not working on the San Antonio Heart and Mind Study, I uh, currently write research manuscripts with team members. I develop posters to hopefully present crucial findings that we see in our studies, um, around the country or to San Antonio or outside the, the country. And when I’m not doing this, I like to have meetings with my team, uh, think about how we’re going to execute the visits more efficiently, develop better materials for our participants, and find new ways to increase our recruitment around San Antonio.”
