This Is Your Brain

Media contact: Caroline Curran, caroline.curran@unchealth.unc.edu

CHAPEL HILL, NC – We take our cars in for 30,000-mile check-ups and we visit our primary care physicians for an annual physical, but what about our brains – what are we doing to ensure they’re as healthy as possible? Daniel Kaufer, MD, Chief of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at UNC School of Medicine and director of the UNC Memory Disorders Program, wants people to take charge of their brain health.

“I want us to stop using the word ‘dementia.’ It has a negative connotation associated with mental illness or even being ‘crazy’ or ‘demented,’” Kaufer said. “This is absolutely not the case. The fact is many people who have been diagnosed with ‘dementia’ really have a neurocognitive disorder caused by one of four proteins.”

Kaufer hopes to destigmatize these neurocognitive disorders, and raise awareness about what causes them in order to empower people to keep their brains active and healthy.

Join Kaufer as the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Health Care present This is Your Brain in honor of Brain Health Awareness Week, a global initiative organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives and the Society for Neuroscience. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 15, at the UNC Fed Ex Global Education Center, 301 Pittsboro St., Chapel Hill.

The event will feature a lecture, followed by a question-and-answer session open to audience members and viewers via the UNC Health Care Facebook and Twitter, as well as UNC School of Medicine’s Facebook and Twitter channels.