Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ

Our Story, Our Purpose

In 1999, Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ leadership identified aging as a strategic priority for the 21st Century. The Texas Tech University System (TTUS) Board of Regents approved the establishment of the Institute for Healthy Aging which was renamed in February 2005, in honor of Mildred and Shirley L. Garrison. Today we are known as the Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ Garrison Institute on Aging (GIA). 

The GIA has grown into the Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ hub for collaborations on aging and brain health with our programs and activities covering the full spectrum, from basic research to translational studies and clinical services, as well as community engagement and service. We are advancing and disseminating knowledge about healthy aging and aging related health issues, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, other forms of dementia, and mental health. Our team does this through basic and translational research on brain health, risk factors, and biomarkers, and through community outreach and education. Under the leadership of the current GIA Executive Director, Dr. Volker Neugebauer, we restructured our basic research division into molecular, electrophysiology, and behavioral cores, improved the GIA brain bank operations through rigorous quality control and innovative anatomical tools, and shifted focus to translational research and clinical studies through collaborations across Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ and TTU. The GIA expanded Project FRONTIER, a longitudinal study on aging and cognitive decline in a multi-ethnic sample of adults in rural communities of West Texas, which provides an epidemiological data base and samples for the GIA biobank. Several mental health service programs and a new comprehensive memory care clinic were established, headed by Dr. Jonathan Singer, a clinical psychologist at TTU and Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ, to improve accurate diagnosis, and the mental health and cognitive functioning of family caregivers and patients with Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias.

Aging-related nervous system dysfunctions represent a major health care problem in this country and worldwide. The vision and goals of the GIA are to provide the infrastructure and expertise for collaborative efforts of basic scientists and clinicians from various disciplines and specialties in brain health, aging, and aging-related and neurodegenerative disorders to better understand health issues in our communities and disease mechanisms for the development of novel and improved diagnostic and therapeutic tools and strategies. 

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