Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience

**Envision a world where our brains remain fit and healthy as we age** The Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Stanford’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute brings together scientific expertise across disciplines to rethink what we know about aging and neurodegenerative disease. We’re pursuing bold, untried approaches to advance the field of brain resilience. Time often takes a toll on cognitive abilities after midlife, leading to memory loss and, in many cases, the development of dementia. By the end of the decade, it’s estimated that 50 million people worldwide will suffer from Alzheimer’s-type dementia simply because modern medicine is extending life expectancy. Alongside Alzheimer’s, increasing numbers are affected by Parkinson’s, frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS—"Lou Gehrig’s disease"). While many of us have witnessed the effects of these diseases firsthand, there is hope. Approximiately one in 10,000 people in wealthier nations live to 100 years old with their cognitive abilities intact. Many more continue into their nineties with healthy brain function, and some individuals with a genetic predisposition to dementia even manage to avoid its onset. What if we could replicate these individuals' brain resilience or even reverse brain aging entirely? The Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience is pursuing these questions with the goal of fundamentally shifting our understanding of the brain's potential for resilience against aging and neurodegeneration—with the ultimate aim of keeping the brain healthy long into what we now consider old age. **Our Mission** Stimulating bold new approaches to tackle the drivers of dementia by bringing together interdisciplinary experts and cultivating a community around the science of brain resilience. **Our Vision** To build the foundations for a future in which the word “dementia” is a bygone memory. **We aim to** **BE BOLD** Pursue bold, untried approaches to advance the science of brain aging and resilience. We convene experts in aging and dementia, as well as collaborators from outside traditional neurodegeneration research through grants, seminars, and symposia. [Learn more about our research programs](https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/programs-brain-resilience) **SHARE SCIENCE** Share data, progress, and expertise to drive progress across the field by building an atlas of the aging human brain in our in-house research lab. This resource will enable researchers at Stanford and around the world to track human brain aging at an unprecedented level of detail and identify specific genetic, cellular, and circuit-level factors that predict resilient aging or cognitive decline. [Learn more about the Brain Resilience Lab](https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/brain-resilience-laboratory) **ACHIEVE MORE TOGETHER** Achieve together what none of us can accomplish alone. Fostering collaboration across disciplines by welcoming scientists from all fields—pathologists, data scientists, and more—to join our growing interdisciplinary community focused on brain resilience. - [Join our mailing list](https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/get-involved/join-our-mailing-lists) - [Attend an event](https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/events-knight-initiative)