UNM Center for Memory & Aging / NM ADRC
January 20, 2026
Lobo researchers are advancing promising new insights into brain health by exploring how the body’s natural waste-clearing system might be enhanced while people are awake. A collaborative team from the UNM School of Medicine, the Mind Research Network, and the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System is studying whether rhythmic changes in carbon dioxide levels, achieved through controlled breathing or brief CO₂ exposure, can boost the brain’s glymphatic pathway. In newly published research, the team demonstrated that intermittent CO₂ can stimulate blood vessel responses that help clear harmful proteins linked to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. The findings open the door to simple strategies, such as slow, intentional breathing, that could support brain function, cognition, and long-term neurological health—research that translates innovative science into real-world strategies for improving brain health and quality of life.
December 2, 2025
Animal studies support the idea that boosting fluid clearance could blunt neurological disorders. More than a decade ago, when researchers discovered a ghostly network of microscopic channels that push fluid through the brain, they began to wonder whether the brain’s plumbing, as they sometimes refer to it, might be implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Now, they are testing a host of ways to improve it.
January 8, 2026
In a surprising discovery, University of New Mexico researchers have found that OTULIN – an enzyme that helps regulate the immune system – also drives the formation of tau, a protein implicated in many neurodegenerative diseases, as well as brain inflammation and aging.
September 19, 2025
Vascular dementia — cognitive impairment caused by disease in the brain’s small blood vessels — is a widespread problem, but it has not been as thoroughly studied as Alzheimer’s disease, in which abnormal plaques and protein tangles are deposited in neural tissue. One researcher at The University of New Mexico hopes to change that.
July 14, 2025
University of New Mexico researchers have received funding to launch an early-stage clinical trial of a vaccine engineered to clear pathological tau protein from the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s dementia.
April 22, 2025
University of New Mexico Health Sciences researchers hope to launch human clinical trials in their quest for a vaccine to prevent the buildup of pathological tau – a protein in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s dementia.
In a new paper published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, a team led by Kiran Bhaskar, PhD, professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology in the UNM School of Medicine, found that the experimental vaccine generated a robust immune response in both mice and non-human primates, building on earlier research.
March 11, 2025
Last December, University of New Mexico neuropathologist Elaine Bearer, MD, PhD, was methodically studying brain tissue samples from two deceased dementia patients when she noticed something peculiar.
May 20, 2024
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Memory & Aging has received a five-year $21.7 million program grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund its Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC).
Funding for the P30 grant through the National Institute on Aging follows a three-year exploratory grant that UNM received as it sought to become one of 35 research universities in the ADRC network, said Gary Rosenberg, MD, a professor in the UNM Department of Neurology and director of the Center for Memory & Aging, who serves as principal investigator on the grant.
February 8, 2023
In a paper published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology in November 2022, UNM neurologist Rawan Tarawneh, MD and her colleagues identified a new protein in the cerebrospinal fluid that can reliably detect endothelial injury – damage to the cells lining the tiny blood vessels in the brain – in Alzheimer’s disease. Using this biomarker, Tarawneh’s team found that endothelial injury is an important contributor to cognitive impairment in even the earliest pre-symptomatic stages of the disease.
October 3, 2022
UNM Alzheimer’s Scientists Bring Mobile Brain Imaging to Zuni Pueblo
June 1, 2022
UNM Researchers to Help Develop Culturally Appropriate Dementia Screening Tool for American Indian Patients
September 10, 2020
To further incentivize innovative ideas and opportunities in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias research, the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, has funded four exploratory Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers (ADRCs). These new centers will broaden current ADRC research initiatives with underrepresented populations such as African Americans, Native Americans, and those in rural communities — all of which have different risk factors for developing these devastating diseases.
October 1, 2020
UNM Memory and Aging Center Update with Dr. Janice Knoefel
Dr. Knoefel joins us to go over the health services offered thru UNM’s Memory and Aging Center. Along with this we talk plans for the center’s future with regard to specialized services for those living with Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease.
August 3, 2020
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) and Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the National Institute on Aging, has awarded $1,069,505 to the University of New Mexico (UNM) Memory and Aging Center to conduct research on health disparities in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease among rural populations, with a particular focus on underserved Native American and Hispanic communities.
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