HDSA Centers of Excellence provide world-class multidisciplinary care to families all over the United States. On February 2nd, HDSA announced the expansion of the Centers of Excellence Program to include 54 sites in 35 states plus the District of Columbia. Read more about our COEs and all locations in this week’s press release.
Professionals at these locations include neurologists, psychiatrists, social workers, therapists, and counselors with extensive HD experience who work together to provide care and support for HD families. Because HDSA is highly committed to supporting clinical research, HDSA Centers of Excellence must also demonstrate their ability to provide clinical research opportunities. We’re excited to continue the expansion of expert HD research and care nationwide.
Stanford HOPES Project
Huntington’s Outreach Project for Education at Stanford (HOPES) is a student-run project at Stanford University with the goal of presenting accessible HD information to audiences worldwide. They create written and audio content to address a range of topics, including updates on research. You may enjoy checking out their podcast, their informative pages about different aspects of HD research, or their quarterly research updates.
Predicting Disease through Language
An article in the New York Times this week talked about a study in which lBM researchers used language tests to predict whether a person might develop Alzheimer’s disease down the road. It turns out that subtle changes in speech and writing can be important clues about brain health.
Although the focus of this research was Alzheimer’s disease, these insights will be important for diseases like HD as well; according to the article, “the hope is to extend the Alzheimer’s work to find subtle changes in language use by people with no obvious symptoms but who will go on to develop other neurological diseases.” In fact, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are including the Huntington’s disease community in a large speech biomarkers study, currently linked on HDSA’s research surveys page. It involves recording yourself describing pictures and listing words, and could be impactful for researchers learning more about cognitive changes in aging and neurological diseases like HD. Anyone can participate here – it’s easy and fun.
