B
Beau_Ouiville
Guest
Nuns acting selflessly!
"Catholic nuns are known for their acts of charity, but Sister Adrienne Schmidt has found a way to give beyond the grave: she will donate her brain to science.
First, though, she is exercising it in an annual battery of memory tests administered by Rush University researchers. Schmidt, 82, repeats two-digit numbers, then three-, four-, five-, six-, seven-. She names as many animals as she can in a minute. She listens to a 30-second story about a school cafeteria cook who is robbed of $56. A half-hour later, she must repeat as many details as she can.
The yearly tests, which stretch over an hour, are designed to provide a history of how her brain is aging. When the time comes, Schmidt’s brain will join hundreds of others in 38 cooling units in a laboratory at Rush University Medical Center.
Schmidt is one of the original participants in Rush’s Religious Orders Study, which began in 1993. It is one of a handful of studies nationwide that matches donated brains with a rich and detailed clinical history gleaned from years of memory tests and physical exams. Current funding for the study is slated to run out next year, but Rush researchers are readying a federal grant proposal to extend the study five years because it continues to yield a bounty of results."
chicagotribune.com/health/ct-x-c-religious-orders-study-20100813,0,4947478.story
"Catholic nuns are known for their acts of charity, but Sister Adrienne Schmidt has found a way to give beyond the grave: she will donate her brain to science.
First, though, she is exercising it in an annual battery of memory tests administered by Rush University researchers. Schmidt, 82, repeats two-digit numbers, then three-, four-, five-, six-, seven-. She names as many animals as she can in a minute. She listens to a 30-second story about a school cafeteria cook who is robbed of $56. A half-hour later, she must repeat as many details as she can.
The yearly tests, which stretch over an hour, are designed to provide a history of how her brain is aging. When the time comes, Schmidt’s brain will join hundreds of others in 38 cooling units in a laboratory at Rush University Medical Center.
Schmidt is one of the original participants in Rush’s Religious Orders Study, which began in 1993. It is one of a handful of studies nationwide that matches donated brains with a rich and detailed clinical history gleaned from years of memory tests and physical exams. Current funding for the study is slated to run out next year, but Rush researchers are readying a federal grant proposal to extend the study five years because it continues to yield a bounty of results."
chicagotribune.com/health/ct-x-c-religious-orders-study-20100813,0,4947478.story
