Living with an aging mind: Personal, philosophical and practical considerations

Dementia affects a significant fraction of the aging population. The University of Washington Computational Neuroscience Center is hosting a conversation between physician Barak Gaster and philosopher of science Noga Arikha to discuss the experience of living with dementia and practical steps one can take to prepare for this contingency.

Barak Gaster is a professor of medicine and primary care physician with expertise in the evaluation and management of dementia. After graduating from the University of Chicago with a degree in the history and philosophy of science, he attended medical school at UCSF. He currently directs the CDC-funded Cognition in Primary Care Program at the University of Washington, is a member of the CDC Healthy Brain Initiative Leadership, and is an invited member of the Hastings Center Workgroup on Ethics of Dementia. He co-developed the Dementia Directive which has been downloaded more than 150,000 times and been featured in the New York Times and on NPR.

Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. She is an associate fellow of the Warburg Institute (London), an honorary fellow of the Center for the Politics of Feelings, and a research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). Her first book was Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007). Her most recent book, The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind, charts stories of personal experiences of mental illness, including her mother’s decline into Alzheimer's, and was published this past spring by Basic Books (UK & US).