Distinguished University Professorship Lecture Series - Fall 2026

University of Michigan

AI-assisted summary of Distinguished University Professorship Lecture Series - Fall 2026 — original source. Check the original for full context.

Source published: 2026-10-07

Key ideas

Historian Juan Cole recontextualizes Edward FitzGerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, demonstrating that its themes of transience and imperial collapse directly reflected the turmoil of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. (15:00)
Cognitive neuroscientist John Jonides presents timed-response paradigms revealing that ADHD is characterized by impaired recovery and re-engagement of task goals following distraction, rather than increased initial distractibility. (50:00)
Health and Retirement Study data presented by Kenneth Langa reveals that while dementia prevalence dropped from 11% in 2000 through the 2010s due to education and vascular care, surging obesity and diabetes threaten to reverse this progress. (84:45)
Dementia incurs an estimated $200 billion annual societal cost in the United States, with unpaid informal caregiving representing the largest share of the financial and care burden. (77:00)

Detailed notes

## Background Published on YouTube by the University of Michigan on October 7, 2026, this recording captures the Fall 2026 Distinguished University Professorship Lecture held at the Michigan League Ballroom. The ceremony recognizes faculty members who have made extraordinary contributions across research, teaching, and public service, featuring presentations by newly appointed professorship recipients Juan Cole, John Jonides, and Kenneth Langa.

## TL;DR The event features three wide-ranging academic lectures highlighting breakthroughs across history, neuroscience, and internal medicine. Dr. Juan Cole analyzes Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, framing its fatalistic verses around FitzGerald's personal grief and the geopolitical fallout of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. Dr. John Jonides presents behavioral and neuroimaging evidence on cognitive control, detailing how top-down prefrontal mechanisms override automatic habits and distractor interference. Concluding the session, Dr. Kenneth Langa reviews decades of data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), discussing the steep economic burden of dementia, historical drops in cognitive decline, and the essential role of vascular health and education in brain resilience.

## Atmosphere & style The atmosphere is dignified, intellectually expansive, and warmly celebratory, typical of a premier university honoring career-defining achievements. It shifts gracefully between diverse emotional registers, moving from Cole's melancholic exploration of Victorian romance and imperial loss to Jonides's lively, relatable demonstrations of visual attention, before settling into Langa's heartfelt reflections on family, departed mentors, and public health data. The proceedings feel intimate yet consequential, blending institutional pride with genuine gratitude, humor, and rigorous scholarship.

## Bulletin - [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=900s) Historian Juan Cole recontextualizes Edward FitzGerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, demonstrating that its themes of transience and imperial collapse directly reflected the turmoil of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. - [50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3000s) Cognitive neuroscientist John Jonides presents timed-response paradigms revealing that ADHD is characterized by impaired recovery and re-engagement of task goals following distraction, rather than increased initial distractibility. - [01:24:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=5085s) Health and Retirement Study data presented by Kenneth Langa reveals that while dementia prevalence dropped from 11% in 2000 through the 2010s due to education and vascular care, surging obesity and diabetes threaten to reverse this progress. - [01:17:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4620s) Dementia incurs an estimated $200 billion annual societal cost in the United States, with unpaid informal caregiving representing the largest share of the financial and care burden.

## Key takeaways - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=0s) The University of Michigan honored faculty members Juan Cole, John Jonides, and Kenneth Langa with Distinguished University Professorships recognizing careers in teaching, research, and public service. - [09:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=599s) Edward FitzGerald translated Omar Khayyam's Persian quatrains while navigating intense grief over linguist Edward Cowell's departure to Calcutta, a failed marriage, and the violence of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. - [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=900s) FitzGerald's Rubaiyat embedded anti-imperialist critiques, comparing overextended empires to burdened landlords and using the fleeting reign of sultans to mirror British imperial vulnerability. - [21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1290s) Applying Michel Foucault's heterotopia framework, Cole argued FitzGerald offered a melancholic, joyful East that countered the reductive, fanatical depictions central to classical orientalism. - [35:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2110s) John Jonides defined cognitive control as the capacity to override prepotent habits and reflexes to pursue goal-directed actions through selective attention and working memory. - [42:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2535s) Spatial cueing experiments reveal that whereas symbolic central cues can be voluntarily ignored, peripheral cues trigger obligatory, automatic attentional capture. - [47:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2865s) Under timed-response conflict testing, early decision accuracy drops below chance, showing that human motor response defaults to reflexive spatial congruency before top-down control intervenes. - [51:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3100s) fMRI scans show lateral and medial prefrontal cortex activation surges during short-delay conflict trials and fades once reflexive habits are successfully suppressed. - [50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3000s) Behavioral modeling indicates that the core deficit in ADHD is difficulty in re-establishing goal-directed focus after involuntary capture, not higher sensitivity to initial distractors. - [01:12:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4365s) The Health and Retirement Study (HRS), surveying 20,000 older Americans biennially, provides foundational longitudinal data replicated across sister studies in over 40 nations. - [01:17:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4620s) Dementia prevalence among older Americans declined significantly between 2000 and 2012, driven by rising educational attainment, better cardiovascular management, and the removal of lead from gasoline. - [01:30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=5400s) Autopsy studies demonstrate that clinical dementia is predominantly a mixed pathology combining Alzheimer's biomarkers with microvascular disease and blood-brain barrier degradation. - [01:24:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=5085s) Primary non-pharmacological protections against cognitive decline rely on aerobic exercise, social connectivity, lifelong learning, and aggressive management of sensory impairments and vascular health.

## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=0s) Welcoming Remarks and Honoring Distinguished Faculty

The ceremony opens with a reflection on the meaning of a Distinguished University Professorship, describing it as an exceptional honor that embodies the university's tripartite mission of teaching, research, and service, while symbolizing a deep commitment to advancing the public good through scholarship, creativity, and mentorship. Over the decades, the University of Michigan has bestowed this honor upon pioneers whose work altered history and science. Among them were epidemiologist Thomas Francis Jr., who directed the nationwide clinical trials establishing the safety and efficacy of the Salk polio vaccine; James V. Neel, who founded the country’s first academic human genetics department at Michigan; internationally celebrated opera mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett; and neuroscientist Huda Akil, whose groundbreaking research uncovered biological mechanisms underlying depression, pain, and substance addiction.

Past recipients of the Distinguished University Professorship attending the event are invited to stand for recognition, drawing warm applause as members of what the speaker playfully calls "quite a selective club." Today's gathering adds three new luminaries to this pantheon of academic excellence: historian Juan Cole, cognitive neuroscientist John Jonides, and physician-researcher Kenneth Langa.

- **Honorees in attendance and their designated chairs:** - **Dr. Juan Cole:** Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History - **Dr. John Jonides:** Edward E. Smith Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience - **Dr. Kenneth Langa:** A. Regula Herzog Distinguished University Professor of Internal Medicine and Survey Research

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[02:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=157s) Provost McCauley Introduces Dr. Juan Cole

Provost Laurie McCauley takes the podium, thanking President Grasso and expressing her excitement for an event she considers one of the highlights of the academic year. She notes that university leadership has consistently championed the vital role of faculty as public intellectuals who operate at the frontiers of discovery and actively share their insights with the broader public. She also extends special gratitude to Mike Solomon, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Rackham Graduate School, for stewarding the selection committee and serving as moderator for the question-and-answer periods following each presentation.

Turning to the afternoon’s first speaker, Provost McCauley introduces Dr. Juan Cole, professor in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Cole has spent decades reshaping global understanding of South Asia and the Middle East through an extensive portfolio that pairs scholarly rigor with prolific public commentary, having authored 21 books, more than 110 book chapters, and hundreds of articles. In addition to directing several international studies centers at Michigan and guiding generations of doctoral candidates, he has delivered invited lectures around the world, from Qatar National University and the American University in Cairo to Lingnan University in Hong Kong and the Library of Congress. His lecture, titled *"The 1857 Indian Revolution and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,"* explores how Edward FitzGerald’s Victorian translation of medieval Persian quatrains became one of modern publishing’s first global bestsellers against the backdrop of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

---

[05:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=307s) Edward FitzGerald, Edward Cowell, and the Discovery of the Rubaiyat

Taking the stage and grappling briefly with the slide clicker, Dr. Juan Cole jokes that younger audience members might not immediately recognize the title *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*, even though for nearly a century it stood as the single most famous poem in the English language. When Cole was a teenager, it was ubiquitous and routinely quoted in popular culture, though public awareness has since faded. The work’s meteoric rise during the Victorian era is especially striking given its origins: a collection of medieval Persian *ruba'i* (four-line stanzas or quatrains) originating in medieval Iran, translated into English by an idiosyncratic gentleman-scholar named Edward FitzGerald.

FitzGerald hailed from an Anglo-Irish family of extraordinary wealth, possessing sweeping estates across Ireland and England. After completing his degree at Cambridge, he chose not to seek a profession or participate in the glittering high-society circuit favored by his mother. Instead, he retired to a quiet country cottage in Suffolk to live as a semi-reclusive bohemian and prolific letter-writer. As Cole explains, FitzGerald was what modern observers would define as gay—living in an era when British society lacked open vocabulary for same-sex desire and Oscar Wilde would famously characterize it as "the love that dare not speak its name." In an effort to shield himself from social scrutiny, FitzGerald eventually married, an arrangement that proved disastrous; his wife later remarked bitterly that if any schoolfellow appeared as an "embryo Apollo," FitzGerald would instantly make the boy his "heart's idol."

In his mid-30s, FitzGerald formed a deep, romantic friendship with Edward Byles Cowell, a brilliant youth from an Ipswich merchant family. Cowell was a linguistic prodigy determined to attend Oxford. When Cowell eventually married and left for his studies, FitzGerald was crestfallen, frequently traveling to Oxford to stay in the Cowells' home for weeks at a time—to the presumed annoyance of Cowell’s new wife.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Transmission of the Rubaiyat to Edward FitzGerald accDescr: Flowchart tracing how the Persian manuscript moved from the Bodleian Library to FitzGerald via Edward Cowell. subgraph Oxford["Oxford & Bodleian Library"] A["Edward Cowell studies classics & Eastern languages"] --> B["Cowell catalogs Persian manuscripts at Bodleian"] B --> C["Discovers 15th-century manuscript of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat"] end subgraph Suffolk["Tutoring & Separation"] C --> D["Cowell tutors FitzGerald in Persian (1852–1856)"] D --> E["Cowell departs for professorship in Calcutta (1856)"] E --> F["Leaves manuscript copy behind with FitzGerald in Suffolk"] end subgraph Translation["Literary Creation"] F --> G["FitzGerald translates quatrains amidst personal and historical turmoil"] end ```

---

[09:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=599s) Persian as an Imperial Language, Calcutta, and FitzGerald's Crises

Dr. Cole explains that Cowell first stumbled upon Persian literature at his local town library in Ipswich. Far from being confined to Iran, Persian served for centuries as the primary chancery and diplomatic lingua franca across a vast swath of Eurasia, utilized by the Emirate of Bukhara in Central Asia, the Mughal Empire in India, Ottoman courts, and even Hindu kingdoms such as the Marathas. When the British East India Company supplanted the Mughals as rulers of the subcontinent, British administrators inherited this administrative apparatus. Retired company officers often returned to Britain offering private instruction in Persian, creating a niche literary vogue. Seeking an intellectual bond to keep his relationship with Cowell alive, FitzGerald began taking Persian lessons from him in 1852.

Upon finishing his degree in classics, Cowell found domestic academic prospects bleak for an unconnected provincial scholar with eccentric linguistic tastes. He eventually secured a post in Calcutta, India—a development that devastated FitzGerald, who wept openly, convinced that his friend was walking into a tropical disease death trap from which he would never return. Shortly before embarking, Cowell had been cataloging Persian manuscripts at the Bodleian Library and unearthed the quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, the 11th-century Iranian polymath, astronomer, and mathematician.

The verses shocked and captivated Cowell with their radical skepticism and carpe-diem ethos: they rejected the afterlife, mocked religious dogmatism, warned that mortals would spend an eternity "under the black earth," and urged the reader to "take the cash on the barrelhead" right now with wine, companionship, and song. Cowell transcribed a copy, reviewed portions with FitzGerald during their final lessons, and left the manuscript behind when he boarded his ship for India. Over the following eighteen months, FitzGerald threw himself into translating the poems. Cole emphasizes that literary critics have largely overlooked the historical environment surrounding this work: FitzGerald undertook the project while enduring three severe, intersecting personal crises—grieving the departure of his beloved Cowell, agonizing through an incompatible marriage contracted solely to meet social expectations, and confronting the catastrophic outbreak of the 1857 Indian Rebellion.

[15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=900s) The 1857 Rebellion in India and FitzGerald’s Anti-Imperialism

In May 1857, the Indian Rebellion broke out—known to the British as the "Mutiny" and to Indians as the First Revolution or First War of Independence. This uprising placed Edward FitzGerald's close friend Edward Byles Cowell and Cowell’s wife, Elizabeth, in grave danger in Calcutta. The situation was fraught enough that Cowell had to carry an armed musket while walking to teach his classes. When Delhi fell to rebel forces, reports reached Britain of British soldiers and families being massacred in cantonments. Though these accounts were inflated by rumors back in England, the events constituted a terrifying crisis for British observers.

FitzGerald was frantic over Cowell's safety. Faced with hundreds of Persian quatrains, he specifically selected those that mirrored these existential crises, emphasizing recurring themes of wine, transience, and imminent death. FitzGerald's extensive correspondence reveals a distinctly critical view of the British Empire that has been largely overlooked in modern scholarship:

> "I don't know what to think of India, except that it is very terrible... I always think a nation with great estates is like a man with them, more trouble than profit."

Speaking like a disillusioned country landlord, FitzGerald voiced anti-imperialist convictions at a moment when an intense wave of patriotic chauvinism gripped Britain. While not a conventional political radical or Marxist, FitzGerald expressed sympathy with critiques of overproduction and the crises of capitalism. An early, unpolished version of a quatrain preserved in his letters reflects his foreboding about Queen Victoria's imperial dominion:

> "I long for wine, O saki of my soul, > Prepare thy song and fill the morning bowl > For this first summer month that brings the rose > takes many a sultan with it as it goes."

Here, the "sultan" being swept away symbolizes the British ruler and the anticipated unraveling of imperial rule.

[18:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1080s) The Siege of Lucknow and Empire as the Loss of Romance

In late 1857, public attention fixated on Lucknow, the fourth-largest city in India, which fell entirely to rebel forces except for the heavily besieged British residency compound. A relief force under a British officer managed to fight its way into the compound, only to become trapped inside as well. The British public followed these harrowing developments in the press daily. FitzGerald wrote to Cowell noting that the news arriving from the subcontinent offered little sunshine in its prospects. While history shows Britain eventually suppressed the uprising and ruled India for another ninety years, in October 1857 that outcome appeared entirely uncertain.

FitzGerald observed that everyone in England was "trembling for Lucknow, crowded with helplessness and innocence." He reflected self-deprecatingly: "I am ashamed to think how little I understand all these things." In truth, this was an indictment of British leadership, questioning whether wiser statesmen had acted appropriately or understood the consequences of meddling in Indian affairs.

In his published translation, FitzGerald wove his critique of empire into a celebrated verse:

> "With me along some strip of herbage strown > That just divides the desert from the sown, > Where name of slave and sultan is scarce-known, > And pity Sultan Mahmud on his throne."

In the Persian original, the quatrain elevates romantic love and passion over the petty, quotidian power of the royal court. In FitzGerald’s hands, the poem also doubles as an allegory for his relationship with Cowell. Cowell chose imperial ambition over their intimate, unspoken romantic bond. That illicit romance had belonged to the marginal threshold where agricultural settlement meets wilderness—"some strip of herbage that just divides the desert from the sown." In abandoning this space for the colonial civil service, Cowell traded intimacy for state power, becoming the equivalent of Sultan Mahmud, who deserves pity on his throne.

[21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1290s) Heterotopias and a New Form of Orientalism

The British military eventually crushed the uprising through overwhelming artillery and reinforcements, exacting a devastating human toll. Historical estimates range from 400,000 to 800,000 casualties—roughly 100,000 soldiers alongside hundreds of thousands of civilians—with some Indian historians proposing numbers in the millions. British administrators in the aftermath complained openly of severe labor shortages, pointing to the widespread slaughter of young Indian men. A few years later, FitzGerald continued to register his disgust in letters to Cowell:

> "Our outward limbs go on lengthening, while our central heart beats weaklier... I wish we were a small country."

The Rubáiyát continually returns to the Persian trope that imperial majesty is doomed to decay:

> "And look—a thousand Blossoms with the Day > Woke—and a thousand scatter'd into Clay: > And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose > Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away."

To understand this outlook, one can look to Michel Foucault’s concept of the *heterotopia*—a marginal, real-yet-mythic counter-site situated between utopia and dystopia. Foucault explicitly identified Persian gardens, cemeteries, and taverns as heterotopias, which fit the Khayyamic landscape precisely. This framing complicates Edward Said’s model of Orientalism: rather than depicting the East merely as a dystopian land of savagery, fanaticism, and backwardness, FitzGerald’s translation presents an East that is melancholic yet rich with philosophical joy and sensory indulgence—functioning as a kind of Victorian "Las Vegas of the mind."

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Foucault's Heterotopia in FitzGerald's Rubaiyat accDescr: Diagram contrasting traditional dystopian Orientalism with FitzGerald's heterotopic depiction of the East.

subgraph SAID["Traditional Orientalism (Edward Said)"] Dystopia["Dystopian East: Fanaticism, backwardness, savagery"] end

subgraph FOUCAULT["FitzGerald's Heterotopia (Michel Foucault)"] Middle["In-between space: Neither pure utopia nor dystopia"] Locations["Persian gardens, taverns, graveyards"] Tone["Melancholy & existential doubt paired with joy & wine"] Middle --> Locations Middle --> Tone end

SAID -.->|"Contrast"| FOUCAULT ```

- FitzGerald concluded the poetic journey with the famous stanza urging haste before nonexistence: *"One Moment in Annihilation's Waste, / One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste— / The Stars are setting and the Caravan / Starts for the Dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste!"*

[25:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1530s) Q&A: Literary Parallels, Rhyme Schemes, and Publication

Following the conclusion of the lecture, the audience raised several questions about the literary and formal context of the work:

- **Parallels to A. E. Housman and Tennyson:** An audience member drew a comparison between FitzGerald and A. E. Housman, noting that Housman composed the bulk of *A Shropshire Lad* in a single year corresponding to the trial and condemnation of Oscar Wilde (a connection documented by UCLA librarian Paul Naiditch). Juan Cole affirmed the comparison and added an earlier Victorian parallel: Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s *In Memoriam A.H.H.*, written for his deceased companion Arthur Henry Hallam. Tennyson himself noted echoes of his own elegy in FitzGerald’s translation.

- **The Persian AABA Rhyme Scheme:** Asked whether the Rubáiyát's famous AABA rhyme scheme derived from the original Persian, Cole explained that FitzGerald only arrived at this breakthrough in the autumn of 1857. Earlier drafts used alternate forms, but adopting the Persian *ruba'i* rhyme scheme while retaining English iambic pentameter was a major revelation for Victorian readers. The unrhymed third line operates much like the turn in a haiku, carrying surprise and suspense; the novelist George Meredith famously praised FitzGerald's third line as "kingly."

- **Compilation and Publication as a Book:** In response to how the translation became a book, Cole explained that Cowell had originally pioneered translating Persian poetry for general intellectual journals rather than keeping it confined to East India Company specialists. FitzGerald sought to follow Cowell's model, hand-selecting verses that spoke to his own emotional state—including a severe bout of alcoholism during that tumultuous year—before shaping the collection into a cohesive standalone work.

[30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1800s) The Sensational Rise of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát

Professor Juan Cole concludes the improbable publication history of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the *Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám*. FitzGerald had originally intended to publish a modest selection of the quatrains in a popular magazine. However, in 1857—spurred in part by anxieties surrounding the Indian Rebellion—the British Parliament enacted a strict new obscenity law designed to discipline the lower classes across both Britain and colonial India. The magazine editor took fright; celebrating an unapologetic bohemian lifestyle while openly casting doubt on core Christian doctrines like the resurrection and the afterlife seemed guaranteed to attract prosecution from zealous evangelical public morality societies.

Undeterred by the editor's rejection, the independently wealthy FitzGerald took the opposite approach: he doubled down. Warning the editor that the verses might prove far too strong for Anglican clerics ("divines"), he selected an even more provocative collection of 75 quatrains. He then took them to Bernard Quaritch, an eccentric Piccadilly publisher known for rare Orientalist texts—and, as Cole wryly notes, "a bit of smut." FitzGerald paid Quaritch out of his own pocket to print the small volume and send review copies into the world. Initially met with total silence, the obscure pamphlet seemed destined for oblivion until the 1860s and 1870s, when avant-garde artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood stumbled upon it. Enamored with its aesthetic and philosophy, they ignited an obsession that rapidly infected undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge.

From England, the craze crossed the Atlantic, where American publishing houses promptly pirated the unprotected translation. Houghton Mifflin built much of its early commercial prestige on an illustrated, pirated edition of FitzGerald’s text that went viral across the United States. As historian John Carson observed to Cole, the poem’s world-weary skepticism struck a profound chord in a nation reeling from the carnage of the American Civil War, much like the work of Walt Whitman. By 1900, a new edition was being published almost daily, selling millions of copies as standard gift books. Its literary footprint proved inescapable: it inspired a young T. S. Eliot to write verse, prompted Eugene O’Neill to pen a play about the cultural phenomenon, and directly shaped Robert Frost’s celebrated masterpiece, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," which borrows the bleak thematic resonance and the interlocking *AABA* Persian rhyme scheme of the original *rubá'í*.

[33:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2012s) Introduction of Dr. John Jonides by Provost McCauley

Following enthusiastic applause for Professor Cole's ability to bring literary history to life, Provost Laurie McCauley steps forward to introduce the next honoree in the lecture series: Dr. John Jonides, named the Edward E. Smith Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. In addition to this title, Jonides holds appointments as Professor of Psychology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Professor of Radiology in the Medical School, and Co-Director of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility.

Provost McCauley highlights Jonides’ status as a foundational pioneer in cognitive neuroscience whose research positioned the University of Michigan as an international powerhouse in the study of human cognition. Early in the emergence of brain imaging, Jonides used functional imaging techniques to map the architecture of executive functioning, isolating the specialized neural circuitry responsible for storing and manipulating information in working memory. Since joining the Michigan faculty in 1975, his institutional leadership has been equally transformative: - Co-founded the university’s functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Laboratory. - Established and launched the long-running summer neuroimaging training program. - Designed and implemented the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) during his tenure as Associate Dean, establishing a national gold-standard model for involving underrepresented undergraduate students in academic research. - Received the William James Fellow Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science (APS).

Announcing the title of his talk, *"Paying Attention,"* Provost McCauley prepares the audience for Jonides' examination of the brain mechanisms that conquer the overwhelming deluge of sensory input in our visual environment, inviting attendees to "join me in paying attention to Professor Jonides."

[35:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2110s) Cognitive Control and the Mechanisms of Paying Attention

Taking the podium, Professor Jonides begins with a heartfelt tribute to the namesake of his professorship, the late Edward E. Smith. After completing his doctorate at Michigan, Smith pursued a brilliant career across the country before returning to Ann Arbor as a faculty member for 15 years. Over that span, the two men formed a legendary scientific and personal partnership, co-authoring roughly 30 papers while sharing hours on the road as regular running partners. Jonides also extends his gratitude to the extensive network of student and faculty collaborators whose contributions made his decades of research possible.

Turning to the core question of attention, Jonides explains that paying attention fundamentally relies on what psychologists define as **cognitive control**: the executive capacity to guide behavior intentionally in the service of an internal goal, rather than defaulting to reflexes, immediate habits, or prepotent environmental impulses. Almost uniquely developed in humans, cognitive control emerges very slowly over childhood—"as any parent will tell you"—and serves as the bedrock of intelligent life.

To illustrate how hard the brain must fight ingrained reflexes, Jonides recounts a trip to Australia earlier in the year to deliver an invited lecture. Having spent a lifetime driving in North America—sitting on the vehicle's left, keeping to the right-hand side of the road, and negotiating roundabouts counterclockwise—he found himself abruptly forced to execute the exact opposite pattern across every single action. Overriding decades of automatic muscle memory and habit was not an abstract mental exercise, he jokes, but a strict cognitive necessity "in order to achieve my goal... to stay alive."

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Architecture of Cognitive Control accDescr: The two prerequisite components of cognitive control: short-term memory and selective attention.

subgraph CC["Cognitive Control: Goal-Directed Action"] G["Overcoming Prepotent Habits / Impulses"] end

subgraph Requirements["Prerequisites for Attention"] STM["1. Short-Term Memory (Maintains and updates goals over time)"] SA["2. Selective Attention (Focuses on goal-relevant signals)"] end

subgraph Filtering["Filtering Demands"] EXT["External Distractions (Loud noises, visual clutter)"] INT["Internal Distractions (Mind wandering, intrusive thoughts)"] end

Requirements --> CC SA -->|Suppresses| Filtering ```

Jonides outlines two foundational prerequisites for paying attention: 1. **A short-term memory system:** An active buffer capable of keeping current goals accessible in mind and updating those goals flexibly as contextual demands shift. 2. **Selective attention:** The active mechanism that zeroes in on goal-relevant features while suppressing competing irrelevant input—both external disruptions (like sudden street noises) and internal distractions (such as spontaneous mind-wandering).

While selective attention operates across every sensory modality—allowing a partygoer to isolate a single voice in a crowded room (the cocktail party effect) or a sommelier to tease out subtle cherry notes from the complex chemical bouquet of a Cabernet Sauvignon—Jonides turns his focus entirely to the visual system. Displaying a photograph taken from behind the steering wheel of a car traversing an urban street, he underscores the profound computational challenge of sight. The field of view is crammed with an overwhelming flood of sensory details: towering architecture, approaching vehicles, orange construction cones, and weaving cyclists. Navigating safely through that environment requires an immediate, ruthless filtering mechanism to discard the majority of that visual scene and process only the few signals that matter.

[40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2400s) The Drivers of Attention: Volition and Past Experience

Evolution has equipped humans with selective attention to manage the overwhelming barrage of sensory information in the world. According to prevailing psychological frameworks, this selective mechanism is governed by three primary forces. The first is sheer volition, or overt effort. A classic example of volitional control is the children's puzzle *Where's Waldo?*, where a player must locate the character Waldo within an extraordinarily cluttered scene. Accomplishing this requires deliberate, overt scanning—systematically moving one's gaze from one part of the image to another until Waldo's distinctive features are identified (in this demonstration, tucked away in the upper left of the scene).

The second major controller of attention is past experience and learned scene schema. To illustrate this, the speaker presents an image of a kitchen and asks the audience to spot the toaster. Audience members locate the appliance on the countertop almost instantaneously. This rapid search is guided entirely by prior knowledge about where toasters typically live; while a toaster could theoretically be placed on the floor, nobody looks to the floor first. The speaker quips, "And surely nobody looked at the ceiling because only AI would put a toaster on a ceiling," earning a laugh from the audience. Although the speaker has conducted substantial research on how past experience shapes attention, that topic is set aside for the lecture to focus squarely on the third controller: salient environmental events.

- **Three primary controllers of attention:** Volition/overt effort, past experience, and salient environmental events. - **Volitional search example:** Systematically scanning a complex *Where's Waldo?* visual scene to spot Waldo in the upper-left quadrant. - **Experience-driven search example:** Spotting a toaster on a kitchen countertop rather than searching improbable surfaces like the floor or ceiling.

[42:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2535s) Obligatory Capture: Central versus Peripheral Spatial Cues

Salient occurrences in our immediate environment frequently seize attentional focus on an involuntary, obligatory level. Demonstrating this dynamic with a video clip, the audience's attention is instantaneously pulled by a dog darting across a car from left to right. This automatic capture occurs because the dog appears in the visual periphery and because it is moving—two visual attributes long proven to serve as powerful attentional triggers. Extensive research conducted by the speaker and their students reveals that many of these salient events command visual attention without any volitional permission from the viewer.

To demonstrate this experimentally, researchers presented participants with an eight-letter circular display and tasked them with deciding whether the target letter was an "L" or an "R." Directly before the display appeared, a central arrow pointed toward one of the eight letter locations. Crucially, this arrow was completely uninformative: it pointed to the target letter only 1/8th (12.5%) of the time and toward an irrelevant letter 7/8th (87.5%) of the time. Because viewers possess volitional control over centrally presented stimuli, participants easily ignored the central cue; their reaction times to identify the "L" or "R" were completely identical regardless of whether the arrow pointed to the target or not.

However, the dynamics shifted entirely when the arrow cue was moved from the center of the screen to the visual periphery. Even though this peripheral arrow remained entirely non-predictive (pointing to the target letter only 1/8th of the time) and participants were explicitly informed that it was uninformative, they were markedly faster to identify the "L" or "R" when the peripheral arrow happened to point toward it. This performance advantage confirmed that peripheral visual events automatically capture attention in an obligatory fashion that cannot simply be willed away.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Cue Location and Attentional Control accDescr: Comparison of participant response times under central versus peripheral uninformative cues.

subgraph CentralCue["Central Arrow Cue"] C1["Arrow at display center"] --> C2["1/8 target validity (Unpredictive)"] C2 --> C3["Participant tunes out cue"] C3 --> C4["Equal response times (No attentional capture)"] end

subgraph PeripheralCue["Peripheral Arrow Cue"] P1["Arrow in periphery"] --> P2["1/8 target validity (Unpredictive)"] P2 --> P3["Involuntary capture"] P3 --> P4["Faster RT when valid (Obligatory capture effect)"] end ```

[45:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2700s) Mapping the Time Course: Eye Tracking and Distractor Interference

To investigate how attentional capture unfolds across fractions of a second, the speaker and their team turned to high-precision eye tracking. In a representative visual search task, participants begin by fixating on the center of a display and are instructed to make a saccade (move their eyes) as quickly as possible to an oddly shaped target, such as a diamond among circles. In the baseline condition, only the target is present among standard shapes. In the distractor condition, a salient, oddly colored item appears simultaneously in the periphery. Even though participants are instructed that color is completely irrelevant and that they must focus solely on shape, the peripheral color singleton serves as an intrusive distractor.

To map the exact temporal progression of this interference, the laboratory adopted a timed-response paradigm developed in close collaboration with colleague Taraz Lee and their students. In this setup, subjects are required to execute their response precisely at the conclusion of a three-second trial window, cued by an auditory pacing sequence that culminates in a high-pitched tone (*BEEP*). The researchers then systematically manipulate the presentation onset of the visual display within that three-second window. Displaying the visual stimulus early gives participants substantial processing time before the tone, while displaying it late leaves them with very little processing time.

By systematically sampling accuracy across this entire temporal continuum, a clear trajectory emerges: - **Baseline condition (no distractor):** At extremely short processing intervals, subjects do not have sufficient time to process visual features and respond at chance levels (guessing). As processing time increases, their accuracy in moving their eyes directly to the oddly shaped target rises sharply toward near-perfect performance, while erroneous eye movements to non-targets drop to zero. - **Distractor condition:** When an oddly colored distractor appears in the periphery, the response curve looks completely different. At early processing intervals, the distractor immediately grabs attention (traced by an orange curve in the lecture slide), pulling eye movements toward itself despite explicit instructions to ignore it. Top-down volitional control only manages to recover and redirect attention to the true target after this initial involuntary capture has already taken place.

[47:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2865s) The Congruency Effect and Below-Chance Performance

The speaker explores this obligatory capture dynamic even further using a spatial congruency task (akin to a Simon task). In this experiment, participants must press a key with their left or right finger based strictly on the pointing direction of an arrow. However, the arrow itself is presented laterally on either the left or the right side of the screen: - **Congruent (consistent) displays:** The arrow appears on the left side of the screen and points left, or appears on the right side and points right. - **Incongruent (inconsistent) displays:** The arrow appears on the left side of the screen but points right, or appears on the right side but points left.

Because peripheral objects exert an automatic attentional pull, researchers hypothesized that when arrow direction and spatial location clash, the initial peripheral onset of the arrow captures processing before participants can decode the direction the arrow is pointing.

Applying the same timed-response methodology to sample performance across processing time (PT) reveals an intense early interference effect. At the earliest processing intervals, performance across both conditions begins around chance as subjects guess. In congruent displays, accuracy climbs steeply and steadily toward ceiling. In incongruent displays, however, performance initially plunges well *below* chance. Because the physical location of the stimulus commands attention so rapidly, subjects are "seduced into paying attention to the position of the arrow" and inadvertently press the button corresponding to its location rather than its symbolic direction. Only after additional processing time elapses can top-down control override this automatic response and recover correct performance.

[50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3000s) Modeling Habit vs. Goal and Attention Dynamics in ADHD

Reflecting on how to formalize these findings, the research group engaged in substantial "soul searching" to build a computational model of cognitive performance. The architecture of the model rests upon a single fundamental premise: human cognitive processing possesses an internal default where reflexes, prepotency, and ingrained habits dominate behavior whenever no countervailing forces intervene. Alongside these prepotent pathways run goal-relevant processes, such as identifying the true direction indicated by a visual arrow. However, because habit-driven processes fire rapidly and instinctively, they easily take over motor responding across a wide variety of scenarios. By operationalizing this competition mathematically, the team’s computational model successfully reproduces the exact empirical curves observed in human experimental data.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Computational Model of Habit versus Goal Competition accDescr: Diagram illustrating the competition between rapid prepotent habits and intentional goal-directed control over processing time. subgraph S1["Dual Process Dynamics"] H["Habit & Prepotency Fast reflex pathways"] G["Goal-Directed Intent Slower deliberate control"] end subgraph S2["Response Determination"] C{"Temporal Conflict Window"} H -->|"Dominates early"| C G -->|"Overrides late"| C C -->|"Short processing time"| R1["Errors below chance"] C -->|"Extended processing time"| R2["Correct goal response"] end ```

The speaker connects these dynamics to populations characterized by difficulties with sustained attention, specifically individuals diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Data from an unmedicated ADHD cohort shows that these participants are lured into making premature, incorrect choices at significantly higher rates than neurotypical individuals. Addressing the root cause of this vulnerability, the speaker encapsulates their broader research findings into a single core takeaway: the primary deficit in ADHD is not heightened vulnerability to initial distraction by peripheral stimuli, but rather that "once distracted, they have a harder time getting back on task."

- **Computational Model Premise:** Assumes prepotent, reflex-driven habits inherently dominate motor actions unless actively superseded by deliberate, goal-relevant processing. - **ADHD Performance:** Unmedicated individuals exhibit exaggerated drops in accuracy during early conflict windows compared to neurotypical controls. - **Mechanistic Root:** Empirical evidence indicates the fundamental impairment in ADHD lies in the recovery phase—re-engaging task goals after distraction occurs—rather than in greater initial perceptual capture.

---

[51:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3100s) Neural Mechanisms of Cognitive Control in Prefrontal Cortex

The final leg of the presentation turns to the neural substrates responsible for untangling habits from intentions and asserting goal-directed control. Employing the identical behavioral paradigm within a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) environment, the researchers replicated the behavioral profile observed outside the scanner: on consistent trials, accuracy rises monotonically, while on inconsistent trials, accuracy plunges well below chance before subjects manage to override the habitual response. To isolate the neural signatures of this struggle, the investigators sampled three strategic processing intervals across the temporal distribution: a short interval where the conflict between reflex and goal is at its maximum, an intermediate interval where conflict has attenuated, and a long interval where the conflict has essentially dissipated.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Processing Time and Prefrontal Cortex Activation accDescr: Three processing intervals showing decreasing prefrontal cortical activation as temporal conflict subsides. T1["Short Time Interval Maximum Conflict"] -->|"Diminishing conflict"| T2["Medium Time Interval Attenuated Conflict"] T2 -->|"Resolution achieved"| T3["Long Time Interval Negligible Conflict"] T1 -.-> B1["Substantial lateral & medial PFC activation"] T2 -.-> B2["Markedly reduced PFC activation"] T3 -.-> B3["Negligible / absent activation"] ```

The functional neuroimaging data align with the behavioral metrics. At the shortest processing delay—when participants experience their greatest vulnerability to habit capture—the scans reveal robust blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activations across both lateral and medial portions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), highlighted by prominent green ovals on the presentation slides. As the processing interval expands to the medium duration, these prefrontal activations diminish considerably. By the longest interval, prefrontal activation is barely discernible, demonstrating that these cortical control hubs disengage once the reflexive pull has been successfully conquered. In closing the lecture, the speaker underscores that much remains to be explored regarding both the neural and psychological architecture of cognitive control, concluding with warm appreciation: "thank you for paying attention."

- **Temporal Sampling in fMRI:** Selected short, medium, and long processing intervals mapping directly onto maximal, moderate, and negligible behavioral conflict stages. - **Prefrontal Localization:** Lateral and medial prefrontal cortex demonstrate high activation exclusively when participants actively fight to disengage from prepotent habits. - **Neural Time Course:** Prefrontal recruitment drops in direct proportion to the passage of processing time, fading to near-baseline levels once goal alignment is established.

---

[55:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3300s) Q&A: Developmental Alignment in Schooling and Evolutionary Origins of Distraction

With the lecture concluded, the floor opens to audience questions. A researcher in early childhood education asks the first question from the front row, inquiring whether cognitive control capacities follow a developmental trajectory and whether conventional schooling practices might clash with the biological realities of young minds. The questioner hypothesizes that institutional misalignments between how schools demand children pay attention and the developmental limits of early childhood might drive student struggle and exclusion. The speaker affirms the importance of this inquiry, explaining that while he does not conduct developmental work personally, the developmental literature establishes that the growth of cognitive control begins around age three and continues well into a person's mid-twenties. Because traditional schooling ignores this prolonged developmental timeline, there is indeed a massive mismatch between institutional expectations and biological readiness; whether these capacities can be proactively trained in young children to match classroom demands remains an intriguing open question.

A second audience member asks whether the acute vulnerability to distraction observed at short processing intervals reflects an adaptive evolutionary survival mechanism, such as detecting a predator leaping from hiding. The speaker agrees enthusiastically, expressing complete conviction that automatic, involuntary orienting toward peripheral movement and unexpected items was "evolutionarily engineered" to bypass deliberate cognitive control entirely. In life-threatening emergencies, reflexive capture ensures rapid, adaptive reactions without the fatal delay of deliberate conscious reflection.

- **Developmental Window:** Cognitive control mechanisms begin developing at approximately age three and mature gradually through the mid-twenties. - **Institutional Friction:** Modern educational environments impose behavioral and attentional demands that fail to accommodate early childhood developmental stages. - **Evolutionary Function:** Involuntary peripheral attentional capture functions as a hardwired survival adaptation to ensure immediate detection of sudden physical threats.

---

[57:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3435s) Q&A: The Stroop Effect and Methodological Breakthroughs with Taraz Lee

The discussion shifts to cognitive paradigms from the 1970s when an audience member asks about the Stroop effect and whether its interference patterns reflect input processing or memory retrieval. The speaker notes that while his own laboratory's direct work on the Stroop effect is modest, the paradigm exhibits the identical underlying computational principles demonstrated in their current spatial tasks. In both cases, individuals struggle to disengage from prepotent, automatic information (such as reading a printed word) in favor of goal-relevant attributes (such as naming font color), illustrating a ubiquitous cognitive tendency where immediate distractions hijack processing resources and impede target goals.

Next, an audience member named Mike asks about the origins of the group's clever paradigm for measuring continuous processing time, wondering whether the method arose through emergent disciplinary consensus or a specific experimental innovation. In response, the speaker good-naturedly halts the formal presentation to single out his University of Michigan collaborator, Taraz Lee, asking him to stand up in the audience. The speaker recounts an anecdote from nearly four years prior, when he and Lee had not yet worked together. Lee sent him a research paper showcasing an early instantiation of the processing-time technique:

> "And I read this paper, and I was completely amazed, and immediately got in touch with Taraz, and within, I think, a month—I don't think I'm exaggerating—we wrote a grant proposal to NSF and got funding in order to be able to launch this line of research."

While noting they did not invent the raw methodology from scratch, the team heavily customized and extended it to fit their paradigm. The session concludes with appreciative applause from the ballroom as the moderator thanks Professor Jonides for his address.

- **Stroop Commonality:** Validates that Stroop interference shares the same temporal and prepotent capture mechanisms as visual spatial-cue tasks. - **Collaborative Genesis:** The methodological framework was inspired by a paper shared by Taraz Lee nearly four years earlier, leading to an NSF grant proposal drafted within a single month. - **Methodological Tailoring:** The research team modified and extended the original processing-time technique into a distinct experimental pipeline for tracing continuous cognitive control.

[01:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3600s) Introduction of Dr. Kenneth Langa by Provost McCauley

Provost Laurie McCauley opens by commending the afternoon’s lecturers for strictly adhering to their allotted times, remarking that it is an extraordinary challenge for preeminent scholars to condense a lifetime of work into just twenty minutes. Introducing the final speaker of the session, she presents Dr. Kenneth Langa as the A. Regula Herzog Distinguished University Professor of Internal Medicine and Survey Research, as well as the Cyrus Sturgis Research Professor of Internal Medicine in the Medical School. Provost McCauley highlights how Professor Langa’s scholarship has fundamentally reshaped global and national perspectives on aging, cognitive impairment, and dementia, particularly through his rigorous examinations of disparities rooted in race, education, wealth, and international context.

Tracing his tenure at the University of Michigan, she notes that he arrived in Ann Arbor in 1994 for his internal medicine internship and residency before joining the faculty in 1999. Alongside training internal medicine residents and maintaining an active outpatient primary care practice at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Langa has served as Associate Director and now Co-Director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Health and Retirement Study (HRS)—the nation's largest and most influential longitudinal investigation into aging. Under his stewardship, the HRS secured a $195 million renewal, representing the single largest research grant in the university's history, while expanding its survey paradigm across more than 35 countries worldwide. With over 400 peer-reviewed publications, more than $215 million in NIH funding brought to Michigan, election to the National Academy of Medicine, and distinguished honors for faculty mentorship, Langa takes the podium to warm applause.

- **Title & Appointments:** A. Regula Herzog Distinguished University Professor of Internal Medicine and Survey Research; Cyrus Sturgis Research Professor of Internal Medicine. - **Career Timeline:** Arrived at Michigan in 1994 for residency; joined faculty in 1999; 29 years of clinical practice at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. - **Grant & Research Scale:** Co-Director of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS); secured a historic $195 million renewal grant; over $215 million total NIH funding; 400+ peer-reviewed articles. - **Honors:** Member of the National Academy of Medicine; multiple mentorship awards.

---

[01:02:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3760s) The Place: The Langa Family’s Roots in Ann Arbor

Taking the stage, Dr. Langa expresses his deep gratitude to Provost McCauley and acknowledges the honor bestowed upon him alongside previous speakers Juan and John, joking that their presentations are "tough acts to follow." To encapsulate a three-decade academic career, he structures his lecture around three cornerstones: the place, the people, and the work. He begins with "the place"—the University of Michigan and the town of Ann Arbor—emphasizing how completely the institution has nurtured both his academic career and his entire family.

His personal history with the university commenced on December 9, 1993, when he and his wife, Lucy, drove across from Chicago while he was completing his MD/PhD at the University of Chicago. His prospective division chief in general medicine, Larry McMahon, lined up interviews with luminaries including Steve Bernstein, Mark Fendrick, Rod Hayward, Joel Howell, and Stephen Katz—scholars who would soon evolve from interviewers into lifelong mentors and collaborators. While Langa was instantly convinced by the faculty and career potential, the deciding vote belonged to Lucy, who fell in love with Ann Arbor as the ideal environment to raise their young children, Melanie and Dan. Showing a vintage photograph of both kids grinning over Zingerman's cookies, Langa illustrates the deep imprint the university left on them.

His daughter, Melanie, connected in middle school with Dr. Mary Pedley, assistant curator of maps at the William L. Clements Library. Under Pedley’s mentorship, Melanie pursued a four-year independent study at Community High School researching historic Arctic maps in search of the Northwest Passage. This culminated in her curating a senior-year exhibition titled *An Imaginary Arctic*, which earned dedicated coverage in the *University Record*—coverage Langa playfully laments was larger than most write-ups of his own research. Melanie later returned to Michigan for a medical post-baccalaureate program, collaborating with psychology professor Joseph Gone on the diagnostic complexities of depression in Native American populations. Today, she practices as a family medicine physician in Port Angeles, Washington, caring for Native American and underserved communities. Langa shares that her professional clinic biography proudly proclaims that she grew up in Ann Arbor loving the four seasons, the fall foliage, and the fact that "football Saturdays were the only time there was traffic," closing with an unambiguous "Go Blue."

---

[01:06:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3974s) Family Connections: Music, Sports, and Campus Life

Turning his attention to his son, Dan, Langa pauses with visible emotion, revealing that Dan and his girlfriend Diana had just driven in from Northampton as a complete surprise for the lecture. Displaying a photograph of Dan at age three on the Radrick Farms Golf Course—a local course where Langa and previous speaker John spent substantial time—he recounts how Dan grew into a scratch golfer and a four-year starter on the golf team at Amherst College.

Beyond athletics, the University Musical Society (UMS) played an equally transformative role in Dan’s trajectory. Around age ten, Dan attended a UMS performance by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which left him utterly captivated. He took up the jazz trumpet at Community High School, pursued music at Amherst College, completed a graduate degree in music composition at New York University, and now writes and teaches music at Amherst. Langa highlights Dan’s recently released original album, *After Nothing Comes*, reading an evocative review characterizing the work as "singular and shimmers with a beguiling cyclical, or rather spiral rhythm, constantly circling itself while still moving towards new ground." Drawing laughs from the room, Langa makes sure to plug the record: "And just so you know, it's available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and all streaming services. So *After Nothing Comes*, Dan Langa, Spotify."

Finally, Langa reflects on the campus spaces dearest to his wife, Lucy. For fifteen years, Lucy served as a volunteer docent at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), leading youth educational tours. Her other sanctuary is the Crisler Center. Raised in Minneapolis, where her father began taking her to basketball games at age five, Lucy developed an intense, lifelong passion for college basketball. For twenty-seven years, the couple has attended virtually every home game at Crisler Center. He projects a photo from the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, where Lucy and her friend Amy Storey hunted down their favorite Michigan basketball player, Moritz Wagner, to pose for a snapshot together, celebrating a household that lived and breathed Michigan athletics all the way through recent national championships.

---

[01:09:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4147s) The People: Mentors and Collaborative Foundations

Moving to "the people," Langa pays tribute to the scholar who set his life’s work in motion: A. Regula Herzog. A distinguished research scientist at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and professor of psychology, Herzog was an original co-investigator on the Health and Retirement Study and a groundbreaking pioneer in translating clinical cognitive assessments into population-based survey instruments. Prior to her death from pancreatic cancer in 2002, she served as Langa’s formative research mentor.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Mentorship and Leadership Trajectory of Kenneth Langa accDescr: Diagram illustrating the network of academic mentors, survey pioneers, and collaborative leaders surrounding Kenneth Langa.

subgraph ChicagoMentors["University of Chicago"] EL["Edward Lawler\n(Dissertation Chair)"] BW["Robert Willis\n(Dissertation Committee)"] end

subgraph ISRFoundations["ISR & Early HRS Leadership"] TJ["F. Thomas Juster\n(Founding HRS Director)"] RH["A. Regula Herzog\n(Cognitive Survey Pioneer)"] BW -->|"Becomes HRS Director (1996)"| TJ BW & RH -->|"1997 Meeting"| KL["Kenneth Langa"] end

subgraph ClinicalMentors["Internal Medicine & VA Care"] LM["Larry McMahon"] JH["Joel Howell"] RHyd["Rod Hayward"] MF["Mark Fendrick"] MC["Michael Chernew"] Kang["Regular meetings at Kang's"] LM & JH & RHyd & MF & MC --- Kang end

subgraph ModernHRS["HRS Co-Directors & Core Team"] DW["David Weir\n(Former PI)"] MBO["Mary Beth Ofstedal"] HL["Helen Levy"] JF["Jessica Faul\n(Current Co-Director)"] MK["Mohammed Kabeto"] RMc["Ryan McCammon"] KL <--> JF KL --- DW & MBO & HL & MK & RMc end ```

Langa details how Herzog and her colleague Bob Wallace at the University of Iowa proved that cognitive assessments—such as adaptations of the Mini-Mental State Examination—could be successfully administered over the telephone within large, general-population cohorts like the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) study. Reading directly from Herzog and Wallace's seminal paper, Langa recites their conclusions:

> "Evaluation of the measures in terms of psychometric properties, missing data, telephone administration, and formation of an aggregate index is encouraging. Their construct validity is evidenced by their expected correlations with sociodemographics, health, and function."

"And basically," Langa observes, "with those two sentences, Regula created the scientific area that I spent my entire career doing and building on."

He also acknowledges the crucial institutional links that brought him into ISR. Edward Lawler chaired his dissertation committee at Chicago, while committee member Robert Willis moved to Michigan in 1996 to succeed F. Thomas Juster as Director of the HRS. In 1997, Willis invited Langa to a one-hour meeting at ISR with Herzog. That single hour, Langa notes, permanently altered the trajectory of his career, integrating him directly into the study of dementia within the HRS framework.

Langa goes on to recognize the vital circle of collaborators who sustained this enterprise over decades: former principal investigator David Weir, associate directors Mary Beth Ofstedal and Helen Levy, current co-director Jessica Faul, and longtime data analysts and colleagues Mohammed Kabeto and Ryan McCammon. Switching metaphorically into his white coat, he recalls his time in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and thanks his mentors in general internal medicine—Larry McMahon, Joel Howell, Rod Hayward, Mark Fendrick, and Michael Chernew—joking that an extraordinary amount of early academic strategy was forged over Korean dishes at Kang's restaurant. He likewise extends warm thanks to clinical leaders Sanjay Saint and Eve Kerr, as well as the VA patients he cared for across twenty-nine years in practice.

---

[01:12:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4365s) The Work: The Scope and Global Reach of the Health and Retirement Study

Langa transitions into the core findings of his research enterprise, centering on the Health and Retirement Study, which has served as his intellectual home for nearly thirty years. Headquartered at the Institute for Social Research and funded continuously by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), the study was mandated by Congress in the early 1990s. Lawmakers recognized the looming demographic shifts of the aging baby boom generation and tasked the NIH with launching a large-scale mechanism to track how health, economics, retirement choices, and functional ability interact over time.

Since launching in 1992, the HRS has surveyed representative cohorts totaling roughly 20,000 American adults on an ongoing biennial basis, utilizing in-person, telephone, and web-based interviews. Crucially, the enterprise is organized as an open-access public resource: data are cleaned and released broadly to the international research community. Langa emphasizes the compounding scientific yield of this open-data philosophy, noting that the study has powered more than 9,000 scientific publications since its inception, with fresh findings appearing in peer-reviewed journals at an astonishing pace of one to two publications every single day (well over 500 per year).

- **Inception & History:** Launched in 1992 following a Congressional directive to evaluate aging patterns among the baby boom generation. - **Sponsorship:** Supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA); administered by the Institute for Social Research (ISR). - **Cohort Size & Modality:** Tracks approximately 20,000 U.S. adults across successive waves via face-to-face, telephone, and internet-administered interviews. - **Scientific Impact:** More than 9,000 total peer-reviewed publications; currently generates 500+ papers annually, averaging one to two publications per day worldwide.

[01:15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4500s) The Health and Retirement Study and the True Costs of Dementia

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) collects an exhaustive array of data to understand the aging process in the United States and globally. Beyond core survey questions covering cognitive function, the dataset links directly to administrative records from Medicare and Social Security, while incorporating blood biomarker collection and genetic sequencing. Over the past three decades, the reach of the HRS model has expanded exponentially; more than 40 countries across the globe have developed sister studies patterned directly on its methodology. A key component of this international footprint is the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) network, a specialized sub-study focused on dementia assessment, which has seen an especially rapid expansion across several African nations in the last five years.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Health and Retirement Study Data Integration accDescr: Diagram illustrating how the Health and Retirement Study links multiple data sources to assess dementia impact and prevalence. subgraph CoreData["HRS Integrated Data Sources"] A["Survey Interviews\n(Cognition & Function)"] B["Administrative Records\n(Medicare & Social Security)"] C["Biological Data\n(Blood Biomarkers & Genetics)"] end

subgraph Outcomes["Key Research Findings"] D["Economic Impact\n(~$50K/case; $200B US total in 2010)"] E["Care Burden\n(Informal family care forms largest share)"] F["Prevalence Trends\n(11% in 2000 down to lower rates by 2012)"] end

CoreData --> Outcomes ```

Before the HRS began systematically tracking cognitive metrics alongside economic indicators, capturing the precise societal impact of cognitive impairment was nearly impossible. Early papers established the steep curve of informal family caregiving required as dementia—defined simply as cognitive decline severe enough to cause a loss of personal independence—progressed. Building on those baseline methods, a landmark study led by economist Michael Hurd quantified the comprehensive monetary footprint of dementia in the United States:

- **Per-Case Economic Cost**: Approximately $50,000 per individual diagnosed with dementia. - **National Cost (2010)**: Roughly $200 billion annually nationwide. - **Cost Distribution**: The vast majority of the financial and logistical burden is borne directly by families providing unpaid in-home care (represented visually as the single largest slice of the cost pie), followed by nursing homes and formal long-term care facilities.

Because the HRS tracks participants longitudinally, researchers can measure broader epidemiological shifts in chronic conditions over time. Looking at older Americans aged 65 and above, the prevalence of dementia stood at approximately 11% in the year 2000, but dropped significantly by 2012. Similar optimistic decreases in dementia incidence have since been documented across multiple high-income nations. Potential drivers for this downward trend include substantial increases in average educational attainment—which builds cognitive reserve by increasing synaptic connections to withstand accumulating brain pathologies—better clinical management of cardiovascular risk factors, and long-term public health measures such as removing lead from automotive gasoline.

---

[01:20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4800s) Mentorship, Global Harmonization, and Health Disparities

The infrastructure of the HRS and its Medicare linkages has empowered a rising generation of junior investigators to explore critical public health questions. Critical care physician Jack Iwashyna utilized these linked datasets to investigate the long-term cognitive trajectory of sepsis survivors. While sepsis carries a catastrophic acute in-hospital mortality rate of roughly 50%, Iwashyna demonstrated that ICU survivors faced a significant increase in the odds of substantial, persistent cognitive impairment lasting up to six years after the initial septic event.

Cross-national comparative analyses have yielded equally revealing insights into the social determinants of health. Economist Hwa-Jung Choi leveraged data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)—an HRS-patterned study—to contrast health outcomes between the United States and England across varying socioeconomic tiers:

- **Chronic Disease Burden**: Americans exhibit higher rates of chronic illness across all surveyed conditions compared to their English peers. - **The Income Gradient**: While disparities exist at all wealth tiers, the health gap between the two countries widens dramatically at the lowest end of the income spectrum, demonstrating that America's excess disease burden is heavily concentrated among its economically disadvantaged citizens.

Collaborations with other junior faculty reflect the broad multidisciplinary future of population aging research. Lindsay Kobayashi, an associate professor in the School of Public Health, co-leads the HCAP International Network, directing harmonization efforts across South Africa and the European Union to ensure cognitive assessments translate accurately across distinct languages and cultural environments. Joshua Ehrlich, an ophthalmologist in the medical school, directs the Center on Sensory Health and Aging Research, studying how sensory deficits interact with brain health while launching an HRS-modeled effort in Kenya. Additional field studies include Lewis Morgenstern's long-running work in Corpus Christi, ongoing comparative initiatives in Nepal, and David Flood's population- and clinic-based cohorts in Guatemala. Highlighting these projects, the speaker paused to underscore the civic importance of empirical scholarship, arguing that "democracies depend on fact-based debate, using reliable data on the population." In an era where political figures disregard evidence or spread falsehoods, institutions like the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the University of Michigan serve as vital safeguards for public truth.

---

[01:24:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=5085s) Prescriptions for Brain Health and Audience Q&A on Diet and Trends

Transitioning from population-level data back to clinical practice, the presentation closed with actionable, evidence-based recommendations for reducing individual dementia risk. With dry clinical humor, the speaker noted that the single most reliable intervention to avoid dementia is simply to "die young"—drawing laughs while underscoring that the dementia epidemic is fundamentally an artifact of modern longevity. Similarly, "choosing educated and wealthy parents" would stack the deck favorably given the pervasive socioeconomic patterning of American health.

Setting jokes aside, the core clinical guidance emphasizes several concrete lifestyle behaviors: - **Walk**: Regular physical activity represents the closest thing medicine has to a "silver bullet," lowering risks across virtually every chronic disease domain. - **Talk**: Maintaining close social engagement with friends, family, and civic organizations keeps neural networks active and challenged. - **Continuous Learning**: Reading, acquiring new skills, and challenging the brain reinforces cognitive resilience. - **Vascular and Sensory Maintenance**: Aggressively manage hypertension and cardiovascular parameters, prioritize consistent sleep, repair cataracts, and use hearing aids to prevent the cognitive risks tied to sensory deprivation.

Following warm acknowledgments of mentors Regula Herzog and Bob Willis, the floor opened for questions from the audience:

- **Dietary Interventions and Whole-Food Nutrition**: An audience member asked why the presentation omitted the role of whole-food, plant-based diets, referencing studies by Dr. Neal Barnard and Dr. Dean Ornish. The speaker conceded the omission, explaining that diet is undeniably critical to health, but notoriously complex and messy to capture accurately within broad population-based surveys like the HRS. While cardiovascular dietary factors are implicitly linked to vascular brain health, nutritional data remains one of the hardest variables to measure cleanly at a population scale. - **Post-2012 Dementia Incidence Trends**: Another audience member, Chris, inquired about prevalence trends past 2012, noting the apparent paradox of falling dementia rates during an era of heightened public awareness and diagnostic detection. The speaker clarified that the documented decline held steady across high-income countries through the 2010s. However, leading up to 2020, preliminary evidence suggests that the decline has flattened out or may even be reversing, likely driven by sharp, population-wide surges in obesity and type 2 diabetes. The session then moved toward the next inquiry regarding the physiological role of the blood-brain barrier.

[01:30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=5400s) Blood Flow, the Blood-Brain Barrier, and Mixed Dementia Pathologies

An audience member raises a question observing that much of the presentation has approached Alzheimer's and cognitive decline from an epidemiological rather than a pathophysiological angle. Noting that COVID-19 brought widespread attention to "brain fog" and related neurological consequences that might push patients toward dementia or diminished cognition, the questioner asks about current research regarding the blood-brain barrier and environmental insults—such as lead exposure and pollution—penetrating into the brain.

In response, Professor Kenneth Langa emphasizes the critical evolutionary importance of cerebral circulation. While acknowledging his perspective is epidemiological rather than bench neurobiology—modestly noting that other colleagues study neurons under a microscope while he does not—he highlights a favorite talking point: although the human brain accounts for only about 5% of total body weight, it consumes roughly 20% of the blood pumped out of the heart, underscoring how fundamentally dependent brain health is on cardiovascular delivery.

Turning to pathology, Professor Langa explains that thirty years of population-based studies incorporating brain autopsies have revealed a clear truth: dementia is rarely a single, isolated condition. While classical Alzheimer's disease involves toxic protein aggregations—amyloid and tau—nearly everyone autopsied with dementia exhibits multiple overlapping pathologies. Small strokes and long-standing hypertensive vascular damage frequently compromise the blood-brain barrier. When that protective barrier breaks down, it accelerates intracerebral inflammation and drives neuronal cell death. Professor Langa also notes ongoing research by colleagues like Dr. Jack Iwashyna investigating brain fog and the lasting effects of long COVID on the brain, acknowledging that while intensive research is underway, definitive answers are still emerging.

- **Vascular and Evolutionary Demands**: The brain represents approximately 5% of body weight yet receives around 20% of cardiac output. - **Mixed Brain Pathology**: Post-mortem population data over the past three decades show that most dementia cases involve combined mechanisms: hallmark Alzheimer's proteins (amyloid and tau) paired with microvascular strokes and hypertension-induced damage. - **Barrier Breakdown and Inflammation**: Disruption of the blood-brain barrier permits heightened neuroinflammation, compounding cellular death and accelerating cognitive decline. - **Emerging Viral Impacts**: Ongoing investigations, including work by Dr. Jack Iwashyna, are actively probing how long COVID and post-viral "brain fog" affect long-term neurological health.

[01:32:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=5520s) Concluding Remarks and Reception

Following the final response, the moderator invites the audience to give a warm round of applause to Professor Kenneth Langa, celebrating his appointment and presentation as a Distinguished University Professor. The formal session is brought to a close with an announcement inviting all attendees to an immediate reception in the Michigan League Ballroom, accompanied by a final round of recognition for all three Distinguished University Professors honored during the lecture series.

## Notable quotes > [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=900s) I don't know what to think of India, except that it is very terrible... I always think a nation with great estates is like a man with them, more trouble than profit. — Juan Cole

> [18:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1080s) trembling for Lucknow, crowded with helplessness and innocence — Juan Cole

> [21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1290s) Our outward limbs go on lengthening, while our central heart beats weaklier... I wish we were a small country. — Juan Cole

> [21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=1290s) One Moment in Annihilation's Waste, / One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste— / The Stars are setting and the Caravan / Starts for the Dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste! — Juan Cole

> [33:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2012s) join me in paying attention to Professor Jonides — Laurie McCauley

> [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=2400s) And surely nobody looked at the ceiling because only AI would put a toaster on a ceiling — John Jonides

> [50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3000s) once distracted, they have a harder time getting back on task. — John Jonides

> [57:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3435s) And I read this paper, and I was completely amazed, and immediately got in touch with Taraz, and within, I think, a month—I don't think I'm exaggerating—we wrote a grant proposal to NSF and got funding in order to be able to launch this line of research. — John Jonides

> [01:06:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=3974s) And just so you know, it's available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and all streaming services. So After Nothing Comes, Dan Langa, Spotify. — Kenneth Langa

> [01:09:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4147s) Evaluation of the measures in terms of psychometric properties, missing data, telephone administration, and formation of an aggregate index is encouraging. Their construct validity is evidenced by their expected correlations with sociodemographics, health, and function. — Kenneth Langa

> [01:09:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4147s) And basically, with those two sentences, Regula created the scientific area that I spent my entire career doing and building on. — Kenneth Langa

> [01:20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI&t=4800s) democracies depend on fact-based debate, using reliable data on the population. — Kenneth Langa

## Mentioned University of Michigan, Michigan League Ballroom, Thomas Francis Jr., James V. Neel, Shirley Verrett, Huda Akil, Juan Cole, John Jonides, Kenneth Langa, Laurie McCauley, Domenico Grasso, Mike Solomon, Rackham Graduate School, Edward FitzGerald, Edward Byles Cowell, Omar Khayyam, Bodleian Library, British East India Company, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Bernard Quaritch, Houghton Mifflin, Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Eugene O'Neill, Robert Frost, A. E. Housman, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Edward E. Smith, Association for Psychological Science, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), Taraz Lee, Lucy Langa, Melanie Langa, Dan Langa, Larry McMahon, Steve Bernstein, Mark Fendrick, Rod Hayward, Joel Howell, Stephen Katz, Mary Pedley, William L. Clements Library, Joseph Gone, Amherst College, Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, University Musical Society, After Nothing Comes, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Crisler Center, Moritz Wagner, A. Regula Herzog, Institute for Social Research, Bob Wallace, Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old, Edward Lawler, Robert Willis, F. Thomas Juster, David Weir, Mary Beth Ofstedal, Helen Levy, Jessica Faul, Mohammed Kabeto, Ryan McCammon, Michael Chernew, Kang's, Sanjay Saint, Eve Kerr, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, National Institute on Aging, Social Security Administration, Health and Retirement Study, Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol, Michael Hurd, Jack Iwashyna, Hwa-Jung Choi, English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), Lindsay Kobayashi, HCAP International Network, Joshua Ehrlich, Center on Sensory Health and Aging Research, Lewis Morgenstern, David Flood, Neal Barnard, Dean Ornish

## Video description Fall 2026 Distinguished University Professorship Lecture

September 30, 2026 Michigan League Ballroom

A version of this video with audio descriptions is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ7Xu5wJJHU

[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpAFFwbVoI)

中文简报

杰出大学教授系列讲座——2026年秋季本次活动包含三场涉猎广泛的学术讲座，重点展示了历史学、神经科学和内科学领域的突破性进展。Juan Cole 博士分析了 Edward FitzGerald 1859 年翻译的奥马尔·海亚姆《鲁拜集》，结合 FitzGerald 的个人悲痛以及 1857 年印度民族起义的地缘政治影响，剖析了诗中宿命论的诗句。John Jonides 博士展示了关于认知控制的行为学和神经影像学证据，详细阐述了前额叶自上而下的机制如何克服自动化习惯与干扰刺激。在最后一场讲座中，Kenneth Langa 博士回顾了健康与退休研究（HRS）数十年的数据，探讨了失智症沉重的经济负担、认知衰退率的历史性下降，以及血管健康与受教育程度在维持大脑韧性方面的关键作用。历史学家 Juan Cole 重新解读了 Edward FitzGerald 对奥马尔·海亚姆《鲁拜集》的翻译，指出其中关于无常与帝国崩塌的主题直接反映了 1857 年印度民族起义带来的动荡。 (15:00) 认知神经科学家 John Jonides 展示了定时反应范式，揭示多动症（ADHD）的特征在于受到干扰后任务目标的恢复和重新投入能力受损，而非初始抗干扰能力更弱。 (50:00) Kenneth Langa 展示的健康与退休研究（HRS）数据显示，尽管受教育程度和血管护理的提升使失智症患病率从 2000 年的 11% 持续下降至 2010 年代，但肥胖和糖尿病的激增有可能逆转这一进展。 (84:45) 失智症每年在美国造成的社会成本估计达 2000 亿美元，其中无偿非正式照料在财务与护理负担中所占份额最大。 (77:00)

Reading summary

The University of Michigan's Fall 2026 Distinguished University Professorship lectures examine how human agency, cultural expression, and cognitive capacity interact with external environments across literary history, cognitive neuroscience, and population health. FitzGerald's Rubáiyát and Imperial Disillusionment (15:00) Dr. Juan Cole argues that Edward FitzGerald’s 1859 translation of the medieval Persian quatrains of Omar Khayyám was fundamentally shaped by the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Anxious over the safety of his close companion and Persian tutor, Edward Byles Cowell—who was stationed in Calcutta—FitzGerald curated verses emphasizing transience, fatalism, and mortality. Cole identifies an explicit anti-imperial undercurrent in FitzGerald’s private correspondence, which compared imperial expansion to an overburdened estate ("more trouble than profit") and allegorized the fall of Queen Victoria's empire through verses depicting departing sultans. Applying Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia, Cole contends that FitzGerald disrupted Edward Said’s traditional model of Orientalism. Instead of depicting the East as a dystopian realm of savagery and backwardness, FitzGerald framed Persian taverns and gardens as melancholic counter-sites of sensory pleasure and philosophical skepticism, creating an alternative cultural space that resonated with Victorian bohemians seeking refuge from strict religious and social orthodoxies. Mechanisms and Neural Substrates of Attentional Control (42:15) Dr. John Jonides frames attention around cognitive control, defined as the executive capacity to pursue internal goals while overriding prepotent reflexes and habits. While observers can deliberately ignore non-predictive cues located centrally in their visual field, peripheral cues command obligatory attentional capture. Using a timed-response task developed with Taraz Lee, Jonides demonstrates that when spatial locations and target directions conflict, participant accuracy drops significantly below chance at brief processing windows because rapid peripheral capture temporarily misleads motor responses before deliberate top-down processing can intervene. Functional neuroimaging reveals the biological signature of this struggle. At minimal processing intervals characterized by peak conflict between reflex and intention, functional MRI scans show pronounced activation across both lateral and medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions. This prefrontal engagement steadily attenuates as additional processing time permits goal-directed control to resolve interference. Jonides links these dynamics to behavioral vulnerabilities in unmedicated ADHD populations and notes that human cognitive control develops slowly from age three through the mid-twenties, creating institutional mismatches with traditional schooling. Population Epidemiology and the Global Dementia Burden (75:00) Dr. Kenneth Langa outlines insights from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), an open-access longitudinal survey tracking approximately 20,000 older Americans biennially since 1992, supported by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration. Replicated across more than 40 countries through the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP), HRS data established that the national economic cost of dementia reached approximately $200 billion annually around 2010 (roughly $50,000 per case), with informal family caregiving representing the largest share of this financial burden. Linking population surveys to Medicare records enabled researchers to identify distinct clinical and socioeconomic disparities. Investigations by Jack Iwashyna showed that intensive care unit sepsis survivors face elevated risks of persistent, substantial cognitive impairment lasting up to six years. Concurrently, comparative analyses linking HRS to English data revealed that America’s elevated burden of chronic illness is heavily concentrated among its lowest income brackets. Vascular Circulation, Mixed Pathology, and Preventive Care (84:45) Turning to clinical physiology, Langa emphasizes that although the human brain accounts for only about 5% of body weight, it consumes roughly 20% of cardiac output, tying neural health directly to vascular performance. Decades of population-based autopsy studies demonstrate that clinical dementia is rarely driven by isolated Alzheimer's pathology; instead, most patients exhibit overlapping pathologies, including hypertensive microvascular injury and minor strokes that compromise the blood-brain barrier, exacerbating neuroinflammation and cell death. Given the limitations of pharmacological cures, Langa advocates evidence-based lifestyle modifications to preserve cognitive reserve: sustained aerobic activity ("walking"), continuous social engagement ("talking"), ongoing cognitive stimulation, correction of visual and hearing impairments, and strict management of hypertension. While acknowledging audience queries regarding plant-based diets, Langa notes that nutritional data remain difficult to measure with precision within broad population surveys, even as cardiovascular maintenance remains paramount. Across historical, neural, and epidemiological registers, the lectures demonstrate that human performance and health outcomes are mediated by larger systemic structures—whether colonial administrative networks, cortical circuits, or socioeconomic conditions. Significant questions persist across these disciplines, particularly regarding the developmental alignment of educational institutions with cognitive biology, the mechanisms linking viral and environmental insults to blood-brain barrier degradation, and the challenge of incorporating complex dietary measurements into population aging models.

Source quotes

[15:00] Juan Cole: I don't know what to think of India, except that it is very terrible... I always think a nation with great estates is like a man with them, more trouble than profit. [18:00] Juan Cole: trembling for Lucknow, crowded with helplessness and innocence [21:30] Juan Cole: Our outward limbs go on lengthening, while our central heart beats weaklier... I wish we were a small country. [21:30] Juan Cole: One Moment in Annihilation's Waste, / One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste— / The Stars are setting and the Caravan / Starts for the Dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste! [33:32] Laurie McCauley: join me in paying attention to Professor Jonides [40:00] John Jonides: And surely nobody looked at the ceiling because only AI would put a toaster on a ceiling [50:00] John Jonides: once distracted, they have a harder time getting back on task. [57:15] John Jonides: And I read this paper, and I was completely amazed, and immediately got in touch with Taraz, and within, I think, a month—I don't think I'm exaggerating—we wrote a grant proposal to NSF and got funding in order to be able to launch this line of research. [66:14] Kenneth Langa: And just so you know, it's available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and all streaming services. So After Nothing Comes, Dan Langa, Spotify. [69:07] Kenneth Langa: Evaluation of the measures in terms of psychometric properties, missing data, telephone administration, and formation of an aggregate index is encouraging. Their construct validity is evidenced by their expected correlations with sociodemographics, health, and function. [69:07] Kenneth Langa: And basically, with those two sentences, Regula created the scientific area that I spent my entire career doing and building on. [80:00] Kenneth Langa: democracies depend on fact-based debate, using reliable data on the population.

Original transcript

[0:00] A distinguished university professorship is an exceptional honor that recognizes the embodiment of our mission of teaching, research, and service. It symbolizes our commitment to improving the public good through scholarship, education, creativity, and mentoring. Through the decades, the university has recognized extraordinary individuals With this honor, That includes the epidemiologist Tommy Francis, who led the massive trials that proved the polio vaccine was safe and effective. James Neal. who established the country's first academic program in genetics. here at Michigan. Shirley Barrett. whose extraordinary voice captivated opera fans. And Huda Keel. whose research has better explained the science of depression, pain and addiction. For our guest today, you have received If you have received a distinguished university professorship, would you please stand to be recognized? Thank you. It's quite a selective club. Thank you for enriching our university and the world. Today, we're expanding this pantheon of Michigan academic excellence with three scholars who will share their expertise, and insights. They are Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History. John Janaitis. the Edward E. Smith Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Kenneth Langa. the A. Ruegala Herzog Distinguished University Professor of Internal Medicine and Survey Research. Please join me in applauding their achievements and contributions to Michigan's academic reputation. I would now like to introduce Provost Laurie McCauley, who will tell us more about today's honorees. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, President Grasso. It is an honor to join all of you What I find is one of the best events on our campus President Grasso has consistently emphasized the role of our faculty as public intellectuals as people at the frontiers of knowledge sharing their discoveries and creative practice with our community and the public at large. This afternoon's event is a crystallization of that idea, It's also one of the highlights of the academic year at the University of Michigan. Before we start, I want to give special thanks to Mike Solomon our Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Graduate Studies and the dean of the Rackham Graduate School for leading the team. that provides the selection of our distinguished university professors, as well as moderating the Q&A sessions following each lecture. So without further ado, our first speaker is Dr. Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History. and Professor of History in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Juan R. Cole has transformed global understandings of the Middle East and South Asia, advancing the field through a remarkable synthesis of scholarly rigor and public engagement. epitomizing what it means to be a scholar and a public intellectual. He's published 21 books. more than 110 book chapters, and a host of print and online articles. At Michigan, he's directed multiple international studies centers. and mentored generations of graduate students across disciplines He's been recognized with lectureships and awards at Qatar's National University Northwestern University, the University of Washington, Lingyan University in Hong Kong, the American University of Cairo, and the Library of Congress. His lecture is entitled, the 1857 Indian Revolution, and the Rubaiyat of Omar, [5:00] Kayyem. It examines Edward Fitzgerald's translation of Persian quatrains during the first Great Attempted Revolution. against British rule in India, and provides insight into a classic of world literature and one of Modern Publishing's first great bestsellers. Please join me in welcoming Professor Cole. Thank you. Well, thank you, Provost Macaulay, for those kind words, and thanks to the... University for this great honor. . Since I only have 20 minutes, I'll jump in. uh... The younger of you in the audience won't know what I'm talking about. when I talk about the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. But for a good century, It was the most famous poem in the English language. And when I was a teenager, you encountered it as a matter of course. It still gets quoted occasionally, but I think the public awareness of it has declined. And it's an incredible story of how it became the most famous poem in the English language, because it is a Persian set of quatrains or four-line poems from Medieval Iran. and you might not have expected it to take the world by storm in the Victorian period. I'm pressing and nothing is happening. There we go. Um... It was translated by a gentleman scholar Edward Fitzgerald. who was from an Anglo-Irish family that was fabulously wealthy. They had estates and land as far as the eye could see, both in Ireland and in England, And he went to Cambridge and Soon after getting his degree more or less retired, He had a nice cottage and He was kind of a Bohemian. He wasn't very interested in the high party life that his mother pursued, and he was a little bit reclusive. He wrote a lot of letters, and he was one of the great letter writers of the Victorian era. He... He was what we would now call gay. Although the Victorians didn't really have a vocabulary for same-sex love, And in fact, Oscar Wilde famously called it a love that cannot be named And Fitzgerald, however people around him noticed, and at one point he made the mistake of trying to rehabilitate himself in society's eyes by getting married. And, um, That was a disaster. as you might imagine, and his wife is alleged to have said that if any among his school fellows flourished Um, as an embryo Apollo he would have temporarily constituted the youth his heart's idol. He kept falling in love with his male friends at school, and he admitted this. And - When he was in his mid-30s, he encountered a young man in MR. East England in Suffolk. where he was living. who lived in a small town, And this young man was a from a merchant family, but he was A prodigy. He had an incredible talent for learning languages, and he was determined to make something of himself and ultimately to go to Oxford And I believe the two of them shared... This romantic friendship is what the Victorians would have called it. and Mm-hmm. Fitzgerald wasn't very happy about his young friend Edward Cowell going to Oxford because it took him away from from Suffolk, and he would go and stay with Cowell. Cowell did get married, He would go and stay with the couple in Oxford for weeks at a time. I don't think Mrs. Cowell was very happy about it. And... Cowell had encountered [10:00] Persian at his public library in Ipswich, because Persian had been not just the language of Iran, but it had been a kind of chancery language, a language the government was conducted in over a broad area of space and time. The Emirate of Bukhara in Central Asia, the Mughals in India, the Ottomans, even some Hindu kingdoms like the Marathas, you know, kept their records in Persian. It was cultivated throughout these areas. And so as the British became the successors of the Mughals in India, ruling the subcontinent, they inherited this devotion to Persian. And so many former East India Company officials retired back home and tutored people in Persian, translated works. Persian poetry had a certain vogue. And so Cowell got involved in that network and an older East India Company official tutored him in Persian And I think Fitzgerald wanted to keep their relationship lively so he started being tutored in Persian by Cowell in 1852 But Cowell finished his degree at Oxford, which was mainly in classics, and then there were no jobs for him. He was from a provincial town and wasn't well known, and he had this odd interest in Eastern languages. And so he looked around, and he did get a job in Calcutta, in India, which broke Fitzgerald's heart. Fitzgerald wept, and he was convinced he'd never see his friend again. And it was a little dangerous to go out to India at that time because people died of tropical diseases, and it was before vaccinations and so forth. And then just before he left, Cowell was working in the Bodleian Library as a cataloger of Persian manuscripts. And he discovered this manuscript, which was called the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Rubaiyat means quatrains. Omar Khayyam was a medieval Iranian astronomer and mathematician And so Cowell looked into this book and it was full of scandalous sentiments There is no afterlife. Don't be putting your hopes on heaven. Take the cash on the barrelhead while you're here. You're going to be sleeping a long time under the black earth. So before you check out, as you will and soon, you should try and have a little bit of a good time. So some parties and some wine and some beloveds and so forth. And for a Victorian gentleman, to have these things said openly was quite shocking. And so Cowell read a little bit of the manuscript with Fitzgerald as part of their tutoring and then left it behind, left a copy behind for Fitzgerald and went off to India. And in the next year and a half, Fitzgerald tried his hand at translating some of these quatrains. And my argument is that although there's an enormous literature, as you might imagine on Fitzgerald and this translation very few historians have taken up the subject And we historians contextualize We want to know what else was going on while this was happening And what was going on was very interesting because the translation was undertaken at a time of three great crises in Fitzgerald's life. One was he lost his beloved, Cowell, to Calcutta, And he was convinced he'd never come back. I mean, it was like a death sentence. And then he was alone and not in society, and people knew that he was a quote-unquote confirmed bachelor. And so in order to rehabilitate himself in society, he tried marrying. and a huge mistake. And he suffered and his poor wife suffered enormously because he was out of sorts. And she thought she's marrying into a fabulously wealthy family and she could make this her entree into high society. And he hated high society. And so that just didn't work out. But he was translating the poetry while his marriage [15:00] which was disintegrating. And then, as I'll talk about, what the British called the mutiny, the great rebellion of 1857-58, broke out in India, which put his friends in danger. As I go along, I'm showing you some of Fitzgerald's translations of the quatrains. I'm not going to read them. But you can see the kind of thing he's... He's saying, And so wine and imminent death is a big theme. So in May 1857, the Indian Revolution breaks out. The Indians call it the First Revolution. and Cowell and Elizabeth, his wife are endangered there in Calcutta. Cowell actually has to wear a musket all the time as he's going off and teaching his classes. He's armed. uh the the the capital delhi falls to the rebels and and a lot of british soldiers and some British soldiers' families in the cantonments were massacred by the not as many or as viciously as The rumors spread back in England, but still it was a horrible tragedy for them. And Fitzgerald was frantic that his friend is now in danger I believe he chose out because he had hundreds of quatrains to choose from. He chose out those quatrains WHICH. were evocative of these crises. And he because he wrote so many letters, we know what he was thinking. On the fighting in India, he says at one point, "I don't know what to think of India, except that it is very terrible," i.e. the rebellion and the death. I always think a nation with great estates is like a man with them, more trouble than profit. spoken like a true disappointed landlord. Fitzgerald was an anti-imperial figure. And this is not in the literature. Nobody has talked about this. He didn't approve of the British Empire. He wasn't, you know... a political kind of anti-imperialist. He wasn't a Marxist, although he did believe in some Marxist principles like overproduction and the crisis of capitalism. But, um, During the rebellion in 1857-58, this fervor of chauvinism and patriotism and anger swept over England, to say something like that, in the middle of this is really quite remarkable. And I think the poetry reflects this. So this one I will read. It's done in a style before the one that he finally settled on. It's in one of his letters. He says, "I long for wine, O sake of my soul. Saki is the wine server. Prepare thy song and fill the morning bowl For this first summer month that brings the rose takes many a sultan with it as it goes. Well, Sultan is a ruler. And I think he's talking about the collapse of the British Empire It's Queen Victoria that's in danger. Thank you. And then another thing that happened was that the city of Lucknow, which was the fourth largest city of -- India fell to the rebels. except for the residency, the British Embassy more or less, and its compound. But then everybody there was trapped and besieged by the rebels, and one officer managed to get into Lucknow in an attempt to relieve the residency, but then he got in, he couldn't get back out. So then more people were trapped. And people followed these things, these events in the newspaper Every single day they talked about them. This was a mania that swept Britain, what was going on in India. And... of Fitzgerald wrote to Cowell at this time that The letters he was getting from Kabul were not very sunshiny in their prospects. And, you know, we know Now that the British... repressed the rebellion and then went on to rule India for another hundred years. But in October of 1857, this was not at all clear. So Fitzgerald, I think, thought that this thing may be over with. And he said, "Only all are trembling for Lucknow, crowded with helplessness and innocence. families and troops caught in the residency, Um, "I am ashamed to think how little I understand all these things." What he really means is how little the British government understands all these things. He says, "But have wiser men and men in place understood much more, [20:00] or understanding have they done what they should. In other words, we have no business being there. Of course they would rise up against us if we're interfering in their business all the time. What were you thinking? That's, I think, what his letter says, that he should write Cowell in Calcutta, who's trapped in the middle of this rebellion. These sentiments, again, is the most remarkable thing. So here's one of the poems that he did publish. in the style that he published them in. "With me along some strip of herbage strewn, that just divides the desert from the stone "Where name of slave and sultan scarcely is known, and pity Sultan Mahmud on his throne. In the original, This is celebrating the glories of romantic love. the splendor of two people. embracing one another and full of passion and love. and comparing it to the poverty, of quotidian power in the palace. Pity poor Mahmoud on his throne. He was a great sultan of the medieval period, who in India. But I think this is a metaphor then for the relationship of Fitzgerald and Cowell. Cowell has chosen empire. over the romantic friendship that he and Fitzgerald had. And And the romance that they had was, of course, that cannot be named. And so it took place where the farmland runs out and you get into Savannah. along some strip of herbage that just divides the desert from the sown. So, They had that. They were meeting at that place that's in between and Cowell gave it up and chose empire and now, we have to pity Mahmoud upon his throne. So in the aftermath of this rebellion, the British sent out a lot of troops and more importantly, a lot of guns and artillery. and they did put down the rebellion. at a very high cost. The historians argue about these things. I think at least 400,000 people were killed maybe 100,000 troops and 300,000 civilians, women, and children, and so forth. Some people say 800,000. There's one Indian historian who suggested millions We do know that in the aftermath, the British officials complained about a labor shortage. So they seem to have killed off quite a lot of able-bodied young men. who had been in rebellion. And then as a couple of years later, Fitzgerald is still writing to Cowell. He says complaining about empire. He's saying that Our outward limbs go on lengthening. while our central heart beats weaklier, doesn't approve of this thing. He said, "I wish we were a small country." And, um, uh, And his poetry plays on this trope that's found in the Persian poetry of the greatness and the magnificent of the past rulers falls into decay. and time. Time tarnishes their glory. So this poem says, And look, a thousand blossoms with the day "woke and a thousand scattered into clay, So the flowers bloom and then they're gone. And this first summer month that brings the rose, "shall take Jamshed and Keikobod away." Those are mythical ancient Iranian rulers. Um, So just concluding, my argument is actually coming from the French philosopher Michel Foucault, who talked about something in between a utopia and a dystopia. which he called a heterotopia. a marginal place. He talked about Persian gardens and graveyards and taverns and so forth, which fits the Persian poetry to a T that Fitzgerald translates. It is a heterotopia. And I think it inflects Fitzgerald's Orientalism because the kind of Orientalism that the great scholar, Edward Said talked about was a kind of making the East a dystopia. It's fanatical, it's backward, it's savage, and so forth. The poetry depicts an East, that for all of its gloom and pessimism about life, and it's questioning of the meaning of life is still full of joy. It's this in-between place, it's kind of a Las Vegas for the Victorian mind. And And so it's a different kind of Orientalism. And why? [25:00] that people became quite devoted to. There were clubs and people adopted as their philosophy and so forth. So I'll leave you with this one. One moment in annihilation's waste, one moment of the well of life to taste, The stars are setting... "and the caravan starts for the dawn of nothing." Oh, make haste. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Cole, for your lecture. We have some time for some questions. I think we'll have microphones that will come around to you, if you'd just like to raise your hand. And we have one here, and then we'll start here, and then we'll go over there. Thank you. Thank you, Juan, for that splendid paper. The motivation of Fitzgerald reminds me of the motivation of a houseman who only wrote poetry in one year. And that was the year when Oscar Wilde was condemned. And Paul Nadich, a late librarian at UCLA, actually demonstrated this by finding of Haussmann's materials from his liaisons in Paris. And it's all very interesting stuff and a very interesting parallel for Fitzgerald's escape into poetry to assuage his anguish, just what Haussmann did. I see. Well, thank you very much for that. By the way, there's also a parallel to Tennyson and In Memoriam. for his lost friend Hallam. And Tennyson thought he saw echoes of in memoriam in Fitzgerald's translation. So yes, this is a kind of maybe a trope. that Thank you for that lecture. Wonderful. I've played many songs that are I think that musical settings of these poems. I'm curious to know if this AABA scheme is also in the Persian. Yes. And you'll know the very first poem that I read to you doesn't have that form. Right. And it was a kind of, I think, breakthrough maybe in the fall of 1857, that Fitzgerald decided to adopt the original Persian rhyme scheme Uh, and, um, And it was one of the sources of pleasure for English readers to encourage, to encounter this new rhyme scheme. He had just used iambic pentameter for the meter, but the rhyme scheme was unusual and it also, The quatrains that he translated have a haiku-like quality to them in the sense that the third line, which doesn't rhyme, with the others. often comp... contains a surprise. just as the last line of haiku does. And so George Meredith, one of the great Victorian novelists, talks about the third line as Kingly in Fitzgerald's poetry. So yes, you know, Fitzgerald translated loosely and not always very literally. But I think on the whole, by and large, he got the gist of the originals. Thank you. Thank you. Final question right there? Dr. Cole, thank you very much. Thank you. Very good. How was the... translations put together as-- the book we know now by... Thank you. when and how. How was the translation put together? Yeah, put together as a book. As a book. Well, Fitzgerald-- was corresponding with Cowell all this time in India, And he was choosing out, he made the choice of which poems he wanted to translate. I'm arguing he made that choice because of his own preoccupations at the time. By the way, he fell into alcoholism, so the wine references are meaningful to him. Just for that year, he recovered. He initially, Cowell had pioneered this publication of Persian poetry for a wider audience. East India Company people would translate it for themselves. and other India aficionados. But Cowell started publishing it in the equivalent of our, you know, the New Republic or the Atlantic or those sorts of magazines. at that time. And so Fitzgerald wanted to imitate him. And he, [30:00] was planning initially to publish a few of these poems in a popular magazine. But just in 1857, because of the Indian rebellion in part, the British government passed a new obscenity law, which was aimed at disciplining the lower classes, both in Britain and in India. and the editor to whom Fitzgerald sent this poetry became afraid that celebrating a kind of bohemian lifestyle, questioning religious doctrines like the resurrection and the afterlife, that this might bring the wrath of the government down on their heads because there were public morality societies that would sue publishers at the time that evangelicals were active in this. So Fitzgerald couldn't get the magazine to publish these pieces. Being very wealthy, he had an alternative. He added to them even more objectionable poetry than he had originally chosen for the magazine He warned the editor he said may may be strong for your divines for your Anglican clerics But he chose out even more and he made 75 he took 75 of them. And then he went to a Piccadilly publisher who specialized in Oriental works, but also I think did a bit of smut, Bernard Querich. And he asked Querich to publish them and he paid Kerich to publish them and to send out some for reviews and so forth. And that might have been the end of the story because it didn't, it wasn't exactly a bestseller. It was some obscure Persian poem. But then in the 1860s and 70s, gradually avant-garde British artistic movements like the pre-Raphaelites discovered this poetry and were wild about it. It fit in with their ethos and their ideas. And then they got the undergraduates at Cambridge and Oxford excited about it. And it gradually became, and then the Americans found out about it and they pirated it. And Houghton Mifflin, the great publishing house in Boston amounted to something because they stole Fitzgerald work and they had it illustrated and it went viral in the United States And I think you can imagine John Carson suggested to me that after the civil war, the sentiments in this poetry might appeal to the American audiences a little bit like Walt Whitman. So that's the publication story. And it's an amazing publication story. By 1900, there was a new edition every day. millions were being sold and people would give them as gifts. And they inspired T.S. Eliot to start writing poetry. Eugene O'Neill has a play based on the phenomenon. You can't touch any part of English literature or American literature that isn't influenced by Fitzgerald. And that famous Robert Frost poem, Stopping by the Woods in a Snowy Night, that's a rubai. It's the same Persian rhyme scheme. It's an imitation of some of the themes about the bleakness of life. This is influenced by the rabbiat. Wow, fascinating. Thank you very much for a wonderful record. Please join me in thanking our distinguished university professor. Thank you. Thank you What a talent for bringing history to life. Thank you so much, Professor Kohl. As the design of these lectures go, we're going to change a topic. And I'm pleased to introduce Dr. John Genitas, the Edward E. Smith Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. He's also a professor of psychology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, professor of radiology in the medical school, and co-director of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility. Professor Janitas is a cognitive neuroscientist whose innovations have made Michigan a global leader in the study of human cognition. An early pioneer in using brain imaging to reveal the structure of executive functions, he identified distinct neural circuits that support the storage and manipulation of information. Since joining our faculty in 1975, he has co-founded U of M's functional MRI [35:00] laboratory and launched the summer neuroimaging training course. As Associate Dean, he designed and implemented the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, a national model that expands access for underrepresented students. Among his honors include the William James Fellow Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Association for Psychological Science His lecture is entitled paying attention. There's too much information available. in any visual seen for all of it to be comprehended at once. Professor Janitas will review three psychological and neuro mechanisms that allow us to pull off the incredible feat that we take for granted the ability to pay attention. Please join me. in paying attention to Professor Danidas. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much to Provost McCauley for that very generous introduction. Let me begin by saying a word or two about the person after whom my professorship is named, Ed Smith. Ed received his PhD at Michigan. and then went off to an illustrious career, as you can tell from some of the honors that are shown on this slide. Ed then returned to Michigan as a professor, was with us for some 15 years, and during that time he and I-- co-published perhaps 30 or so papers. He was a collaborator. and intellect. a running partner, and a great friend. And I'm happy to honor him in this way. Thank you. Let me also say thanks to the many student and faculty colleagues with whom I've had Oh, the great privilege to work over the years. This is just a small subset of them, the ones who've had a hand in some of the work that I'll be describing today. So the topic of today is paying attention, as Provost McCauley mentioned. And what paying attention entails is engaging what psychologists call cognitive control. Cognitive control is the ability to behave in the service of a goal and not be guided by prepotent responses or habits or reflexes. It is nearly a uniquely human ability. It develops very slowly over childhood, as any parent will tell you. And it is absolutely critical for any intelligent behavior. Now to give you a sense of what cognitive control involves, earlier this year I had occasion to go to Australia to give a talk. And I grew up driving in the United States, where I sat in the left seat stayed on the right-hand side of the road and went around traffic circles from right to left. In Australia, I had to do exactly the opposite. So here's a quintessential example where I had to overcome years and years of habit in order to achieve my goal. to stay alive. The requirements for paying attention are two. One is a short-term memory system that can hold goals in mind and adjust those goals as things change. I've done a good deal of work on short-term memory, as Provost McCauley mentioned. And this, unfortunately, that's going to be a topic for another time. The second requirement is the ability to selectively focus on relevant information to the exclusion of irrelevant information Things like distractions in the outside world, loud noises, or distractions from the inside world. like mind wandering. Now, selective attention is possible in all of our senses. If you're a crowded cocktail party, you can tune into one conversation that interests you, and tune out other surrounding conversations. If you were a sommelier, you might be able to tune into the cherry notes in a Cabernet, and not pay attention to some of the other taste characteristics of the wine. But I'm going to focus today on selective attention in the visual modality, because that's where the lion's share of my work has been. And I can illustrate this with this scene. This is a driving scene looking out the windshield of a car. And you can see that there's an enormous amount of information in this visual environment. There are buildings. There are cars. There are cones in the street. There are bicyclists and so forth. of driving successfully has to pay attention to just a small portion of this information. So this raises the question, [40:00] --of how this happens, and evolution has given us the mechanism to do this. And this mechanism is what psychologists call selective attention. Now, that raises now the question of what controls attention. And there are three things that control attention, according to most psychological stories. One is sheer volition. overt effort. And I can illustrate this by giving you an example of a children's game called Finding Waldo. This is Waldo, and the object of the game is to find Waldo in a complex scene that looks like this. Well, how do you do this? The way you do it is by systematically scanning around the scene from one place to another place until you find the features of Waldo, in this case, in the upper left of the-- of the scene. Well, here is a case where overt effort, your own volition, is driving your selective attention. I'm going to get back to overt effort in just a bit when I describe the third a controller of attention. But I want to introduce you first to the second controller, and that is past experience. On the next slide, I'm going to show you a kitchen scene, and what I'd like you to do is to locate the toaster. that's present in the kitchen. Now, I venture to say that you had little trouble in doing this because your past experience tells you that toasters are often located on countertops, and so you located the toaster easily. Of course, the toaster could have been on the floor. That's entirely possible. But I doubt that anyone looked at the floor first. And surely nobody looked at the ceiling because only AI would put a toaster on a ceiling. Thank you. I As I said, I have done a good deal of work on the effective past experience on controlling attention. But again, unfortunately, that's a topic for another time. What I'd like to focus on for the rest of today's lecture is the influence of salient events in the environment around you that are attention controllers themselves. And I can illustrate this by going back to this picture and rolling the film. I imagine that everybody's attention was drawn to the dog who ran across the car from left to right. In part, this is because the dog appears in the periphery, in part because the dog is moving. Both of these have been shown to be salient controllers. of attention. In a long line of work that I've done with students, we have discovered that salient events in the-- at least many salient events in the environment around you control attention in an obligatory manner. You don't have any volitional control. Here's one experiment that demonstrates this. In this experiment, we show participants a display of eight letters that looks like this. And their task for each display is to decide whether there's an L or an R present in the display. And you can see in this one there's an L. Prior to the presentation of the display, we present an arrow in the center of the screen, and the arrow points randomly to one of the letter locations. You can see the percentages on the left. Only 1/8 of the time does it point to the L or the R. The other 7/8 of the time. It points to one of the other letters. In other words, it's entirely unpredictable of the location of the letter. Well, if people have volitional control over where to pay attention, they ought to be able to tune out the direction in which the arrow points. And sure enough, they can. If we -- If we look at these simple data, these are response times to decide whether it was an L or an R. And it doesn't matter whether the arrow points to the L or the R or it points to one of the letters. Their response times are basically identical. But let's consider this case. In this case, once again, there's an arrow pointing to one of the letters in the display. But the arrow, once again, is completely unpredictive of the letter's position. But notice now the arrow appears not in the center of the display, but in a peripheral location. where I've told you before that might be a salient capture of attention. And sure enough, if we look at the response times to respond to the L or the R in this case, individuals are faster to respond to the L or the R when the arrow points to it than when it doesn't, even though they've been told that the arrow is completely unpredicted. Now, this obligatory control over attention has been a matter of some concern to us for some time. And we've been studying the time course of attentional capture, and that's what I'm going to tell you about for the rest of today's lecture. We do this by-- in one experiment, we do-- well, in a set of experiments, we do this by tracking individuals' eye movements, that is, their position. [45:00] addition. the position of their eyes as they're looking at complex displays, using a device something like this one. And I'll tell you about one task. In this one task, individuals start by focusing in the center of the display, and their task is to move their eyes to the oddly shaped item. You can see in this display the oddly shaped item is a diamond. Let's contrast this case with this one, in which their task is the same-- to move their eyes as quickly as possible to the oddly shaped item. But now there's a distractor present in the display, presented in the periphery, an oddly colored item. Individuals are told to ignore the oddly colored item. Their task has to do with shape. So in both of these conditions, there's a target that they're supposed to attend to. And in one condition, there's a distractor that they're supposed to ignore. Well, we have developed a procedure that allows us to study the entire time course of their processing, from the beginning of trial until the time they make a response. And this is largely due to the work of my colleague, Taraz Lee, and students working with him and working with me. And the technique works something like this. They have to-- subjects have to make a response at the end of a three-second interval. from the start of a trial. Well, how do they know when three seconds have elapsed? They know because we give them cues like this. *BEEP* At the high-pitched tone that occurs at three seconds, they have to make their response. And what we do is systematically manipulate when we present the display that they have to respond to. If we present it, say, in the middle of that interval, then they have this much time to process the display. But if we present it earlier in the interval, then they have more time to process the display. Or contrary-wise, if we present it quite late in the interval, they have very little time to process the display. Well, we systematically sample the entire three second interval to examine the accuracy of their being able to move their eyes. as a function of how much time they have to process. And the data from an experiment like this looks something like this. In the case where there's no distractor, Well, in the beginning, when processing time is very short, They just don't have enough time to make any decision at all. And so they're guessing. But as a little bit of time passes, you can see their accuracy in moving their eyes to the target increases dramatically, and their accuracy in not moving their eyes to one of the non-targets decreases to about zero. But what happens when there's a distractor present in the periphery of the display? The pattern of responses is completely different. You can see here in the orange line, the distractor grabs your attention immediately. in spite of the fact that these individuals have been told that it's completely irrelevant to the task, and that they're supposed to ignore it. This is another case where capture seems to be done on an involuntary basis, regardless of volitional control. Well, we've dug deeper into the time course of processing here using a number of other tasks and I'll introduce you to one of them so that we can take a look at this in some detail. In this task, the subjects are required to Make a left finger response or a right finger response depending upon the direction in which an arrow points, But the arrow itself can appear on the left side of the display or the right side of the display. You can see in the top panel here the direction in which the arrow points is consistent. with the side on which it appears. But in the bottom panel, you can see that the direction is inconsistent with the side on which it appears. Well, based on what I've told you about peripheral objects capturing attention, you might suspect that when the direction of the arrow and the position of the arrow are inconsistent, The position of the arrow in the periphery might capture attention immediately and keep you from responding to the direction of the arrow. And we've used the same kind of procedure that I just described to you to interrogate the entire processing interval during each trial to find out how accuracy changes. And this is a fairly typical-- a show of data from a task of this sort. You can see that at very short processing times, abbreviated here PT, We're-- Subjects are guessing because they don't have enough time to process the display. But in the consistent displays, which I've labeled here as congruent, their accuracy rises sharply until it's nearly perfect. What's interesting is what happens in the inconsistent display. Here, accuracy actually falls below chance. because subjects have been seduced into paying attention to the position of the arrow when, in fact, [50:00] supposed to pay attention to the direction of the arrow. Now, we have done a good deal of soul searching in order to develop a computational model of performance in tasks of this sort. And the model depends inherently on just one basic assumption, that internally there are processes based on habit, based on reflex, based on prepotency, for habits to dominate responding in the absence of anything else. But of course you've got a goal in mind, like responding to the direction in which the arrow points. And so there are also goal-relevant processes. But the habit-relevant processes dominate in many situations. And we've elaborated a computational model, which I won't go into, that starts off with this basic assumption on the left of the slide and allows us to produce data of the sort that I showed you in the experiment that I just described. Oh, let me just say that some of you may have been wondering whether people who have difficulty in maintaining attention, that is in not being distracted are more subject to the kind of distraction that I'm talking about in tasks of this sort. And sure enough, we have a program of research that has studied individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And if you look at this slide, you can see that those with ADHD not currently medicated are more seduced into incorrectly responding than neurotypical individuals are. And there is a story to tell about this, but I'll give you one sentence about it. In other research, we've concluded that The problem with those with ADHD is not that they're more distracted. by, say, peripheral information. It's that once distracted, they have a harder time getting back on task. And we have data that supports that point. OK, the final topic for today. Our most recent research has been concerned with trying to isolate the neural mechanisms that are involved in this ability to disambiguate habits from goals and respond in a goal-directed manner. And we've done this using, in one example, the same kind of task that I just described to you. And the behavioral data from people who do this task look just like the graph that I showed you before. In the consistent case, accuracy rises. In the inconsistent case, it falls below chance before people can recover. Now, what we did was we selected three processing times from this entire distribution. And we used those three processing times when we placed individuals into an MRI scanner, and collected functional MRI data to find out what brain areas were active at the time that people were trying to overcome the habit to engage in the goal. And we selected a short processing time, a medium, a short processing time when the conflict between habit and goal is the greatest. a medium one where it's less, and a longer one when it largely shouldn't be present at all. Now, first of all, I'll show you behavioral data from this experiment, showing that inside the scanner, we have replicated the data that you see on the top of this panel. because individuals are showing the greatest conflict at the shortest processing time, a somewhat less conflict at the medium processing time, and hardly any at the longest processing time. So let's take a look at what the brain activations look like. This slide, the green ovals on this slide mark out areas in the brain on the lateral and medial portions of a largely prefrontal cortex. that show substantial activation at the shortest processing interval when people are showing the greatest inability to disengage from the habit and engage in the goal. But we should predict that as the time interval gets longer, processing time gets longer, they should show much less activation in these regions. And here are the activations at the medium processing time. You can see the activations are much reduced. And at the longest processing time, they're hardly there at all. Well, there is a great deal more work to do on the neural basis of this ability to disengage from habits and engage in goals. And indeed, there's a great deal of work to do on the psychological mechanisms that are involved in understanding cognitive control that allows us to engage in goals and allows us to exit our natural habitual tendencies. But for now, I'm just going to thank you for paying attention. Thank you. [55:00] Thank you very much, Professor Genius. Questions are available. I see we have one in the back and then one in the front here. Well, let's start in the front and then we'll go to the back. Thanks. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for that fascinating lecture. I study the practice of teaching with young children. And I'm curious when you just at the end were talking about training control, whether there are developmental aspects of this. Because one hypothesis I have in listening to you is that schooling, especially for young children, is somewhat misaligned with the ways that they know how to pay attention or can, and that the causes of some kinds of failure and exclusion and marginalization might be due to that misalignment. And I just wondered whether that's something you've looked into in terms of development or the alignment between institutions and what they expect of children and where children are. Absolutely fascinating question. Thanks so much for asking it. I myself have not looked into this, but there is a developmental literature on the growth of these cognitive control capacities. And that growth starts around age three and doesn't end until the mid-twenties. Now, if you think about schooling, schooling doesn't honor that age range. And so you can see, as you pointed out, there is a huge misalignment in what children's capacities are and the way school thinks they ought to behave. Now, Are these skills trainable at a younger age so that they might be useful in a typical schooling environment? Fabulous question. Don't know the answer. I'm just curious to the extent to which you feel that the Increased distraction at short processing times may be related to an evolutionary survival instinct. Like if a predator is ready to-- jump out of you, you need to... Yeah, indeed, I'm absolutely convinced that this largely involuntary ability to pay attention to items in the periphery and also to moving objects has been evolutionarily engineered so that we don't have control over it, And it's a good thing. Because we don't want control over it. We want to be able to respond adaptively when dangerous situations occur. Question here. Question here in the front. Yes, while you were giving the presentation, it reminded me of when I was studying in the '70s about the Stup effect. And I was curious. Is there a connection between the input or the retrieval of the information? Yes, there is. So the Stroop effect is another example, for those of you who don't know, of this. a large inability or a poor ability to disengage yourself from one source of information and pay attention to another source of information. And in the work that we've done on the Stroop effect, which I admit is minimal, we've discovered that it honors the same principles that I've told you about the task that I described today. There appears to be a general tendency for distraction to grab your attention and hold you from the goal that you'd like to reach. I have a question. So your methods are fascinating or so clever. Just if you could talk a little bit about how you and your research group actually come up with that way of measuring the processing time, or is that some kind of field consensus that's been developed over time? And how do you go about choosing those particular choices of measurement and task? Thank you, Mike. I'm going to embarrass him right now and ask my colleague Taraz Lee to please stand up. And I'm going to tell you an anecdote. About three and a half years-- almost four years ago now, Taraz sent me a paper. We hadn't been working together at all, a paper which was the-- Early. uh... instantiation of something like the technique that we have used. And I read this paper, and I was completely amazed, and immediately got in touch with Taraz, and within, I think, a month-- I don't think I'm exaggerating-- We wrote a grant proposal to NSF and got funding in order to be able to launch this line of research. We didn't invent this method, but we've tweaked it enough so we feel some ownership. . Thanks so much. Let's thank our distinguished university professor once again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Janudas. It was really fascinating. And it also reminds me to just comment the fact that [60:00] Our speakers are paying attention to their time limits, which for really preeminent scholars to show their kind of lifetimes work in 20 minutes is really challenging. Thank you. All three of you. For our final lecture this afternoon, it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Kenneth Lange, the A. Regula Herzog, Distinguished University Professor of Internal Medicine and Survey Research. and the Cyrus Sturgis Research Professor of Internal Medicine in the medical school. Professor Lange's research has profoundly shaped our understanding of aging, cognitive impairment, and dementia in the United States and around the world. His work examines disparities by race, education, wealth, and global context. He came to Michigan in 1994 for an internal medicine internship and residency and joined our faculty in 1999. He's taught internal medicine residents while also providing outpatient primary care at the VA Ann Arbor Health Care System. As Associate Director and now Co-Director of the NIH-funded Health and Retirement Study, I will note this is the largest and most influential study of aging in the United States. LANGA has helped secure its $195 million renewal the largest grant in the University of Michigan's history. His leadership has helped to expand the HRS model globally to more than 35 countries. He's published over 400 peer-reviewed articles and brought more than $215 million in NIH funding. to Michigan. His many honors include election to the National Academy of Medicine and awards for outstanding mentorship. Please join me in welcoming Professor Kenneth Lange. Thank you, Provost McCauley, and thanks everyone. for coming this afternoon. I really appreciate it. I'm honored and thankful, obviously, for this amazing uh, that the University of Michigan has bestowed on all three of us. Tough acts to follow with Juan and John. So I'm going to try to get through my 30-year career by organizing things this way. I'm going to talk a bit about-- the place, this amazing university that has nurtured both me and actually my entire family, as you'll learn. The people that I've worked with, including regular Herzog, who was the person that really started me on the path that I've been on. And then a bit about the work that we've done. especially the amazing junior faculty and colleagues that I've worked with, as I say, were in good hands. All right, the place. So my connection to Michigan starts on December 9, 1993. My wife, Lucy, and I drove here from Chicago, where I was doing an MD/PhD training at the University of Chicago. And Larry McMahon, my first boss in general medicine, arranged interviews with Steve Bernstein, Mark Fendrick, Rod Hayward, Joel Howell, Stephen Katz, all people that would become my mentors and colleagues in general medicine. entirely sold on the colleagues and career opportunities at Michigan. And Lucy really liked Ann Arbor. And for those friends in the audience, you know, whose opinion was most important in our eventually moving here to Ann Harbor. And Lucy really wanted to come, or a main reason she wanted to come was for these little people here. That's our daughter Melanie on the right and son Dan on the left. Those are Zingerman's cookies. That's why they're smiling like that there. So again, how has the university affected my entire family? Melanie was lucky to meet Dr. Mary Pedley, who is an assistant curator of maps here at the Clements Library in middle school. And they became great friends. And Mary was an amazing teacher and mentor to Melanie. Ended up supervising Melanie's independent study, four-year independent study, while she was at Community High, looking maps in the Clemens Library about the Northwest Passage, and curated an exhibit. [65:00] here during her senior year, again, led by or helped out by Mary. called the An Imaginary Arctic, covered in the university record. I often say that Melanie's exhibit there got more coverage than most of my research that I've done here at Michigan. Melanie went off to college, came back actually to do the medical post-bac program here, reconnected or connected with Joseph Gahn, who was a psychology professor at the time, and did work on the complexities of making diagnosis of depression in Native American populations, Melanie. Melanie's now a physician, a family medicine doctor, out in Port Angeles, Washington, taking care of Native American population as well as others. And on her sort of clinic page where it describes the physicians, so potential patients can learn about them, the first sentence is, Melanie grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, loving the fall foliage, four seasons, and that football Saturdays were the only time traffic. Go Blue. So clearly a Wolverine through and through. My son Dan. who I can't look over there because Dan and his girlfriend Diana drove I drove here from Northampton to join me as a surprise. So thanks to Dan and Diana for that. That's Dan at three years old at the Radrick Farms Golf Course, which John and I actually both played at. John told me he remembered seeing Dan there a long time ago. Dan and I spent a lot of time at Radrick. Dan became a scratch golfer and a starter at Amherst College for four years, so another influence. The University Musical Society has also had a big influence on our family and on Dan's career. When Dan was about 10, we went to a UMS performance that Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center was doing here. Dan became kind of hypnotized with Wynton Marsalis. Dan went on to be a jazz trumpeter at Community High. studied music at Amherst and music composition at NYU, and is now teaching music at Amherst and writing music. "After Nothing Comes" is Dan's most recent album of-- original music and various small flames that it says it's singular and shimmers with a beguiling cyclical, or rather spiral rhythm, constantly circling itself while still moving towards new ground. And just so you know, it's available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and all streaming services. So after nothing comes, Dan Lange, Spotify. hear Lucy's important places here on campus are Uma, Lucy was a volunteer docent there for 15 years doing education and tours for kids. And the other extremely important place for Lucy is Chrysler Center. Lucy grew up in Minneapolis, and her dad started taking her to basketball games when she was five years old, and she has had a college basketball obsession ever since. We've attended nearly every home game at Chrysler Center for the last 27 years. And as you all know, this last year, Michigan was national champs. So it was very exciting in our house. One thing that Lucy and her similarly basketball-obsessed friend, Amy Story, did was go to Chicago for the Big Ten championship. They sought out their favorite player, Merez Johnson, and got a picture with him. Lucy and Amy are the shorter ones on the sides. There. All right. So again, Michigan and Ann Arbor have really been an incredible place for our entire family. Regula Herzog, again, was my first mentor and teacher here at Michigan on the research side at ISR. Regula was a professor of psychology excuse me, research scientist at ISR, a distinguished research scientist. She received that award. One of the original co-investigators on the health retirement study, which Provost Macaulay talked about and I'll tell you more about, and really a pioneer of measuring cognition. in population-based surveys and studies. Again, a mentor, an amazing colleague to many, including me. Sadly, Regula died of pancreatic cancer in 2002. And again, what Regula really did and brought to you [70:00] To the science of understanding cognition in populations is incorporate cognitive testing into population-based surveys. Could we take the tests that are done in clinics to try to understand how well people are thinking, things you've tested you may have taken, like the mini mental state exam? Can we import those measures into surveys, administer them over the phone to understand what's going on in the population? This was a paper that Regula and colleague Bob Wallace at Iowa did to describe sort of the first wave of data in the health and retirement study, what's originally called the AHEAD study there, trying to understand, did these measures work? And you can see there evaluation of the measures in terms of psychometric properties, missing data, telephone administration, and formation of an aggregate index is encouraging. Their construct validity is evidenced by their expected correlations with sociodemographics, health, and function. And basically, with those two sentences, Regula created the scientific area that I spent my entire career doing and building on So again incredibly important to me in my career Just quickly again a few of the people who gotten me here today On the left there is Eddie Lawler who is chair of my dissertation committee at Chicago, a great mentor. And on the right, very important, Bob Willis, who is on my dissertation committee at the University of Chicago, moved here to Michigan in 1996 to take over the directorship of the Health and Retirement Study from Tom Juster. Bob invited me over to ISR for a meeting in 1997 with Bob and Regula, which, as I've said to lots of junior faculty, literally changed my entire life. We had a one-hour meeting, and they sort of invited me into the HRS and studying dementia in the HRS. I've had amazing colleagues on the HRS. Up in the left corner is David Weir, who then became the principal investigator after Bob, Mary Beth Ovstadal, with whom I was associate director, Helen Levy, also associate director with Helen, Jessica Fall, down in the lower left, who is now my fellow co-director on the HRS and then Mohamed Cabedo and Ryan McCammon who are two long colleagues and collaborators that have gotten lots of the research done that I been involved in Quickly putting on my white coat here the folks who have been my mentors in general medicine, and I was lucky to be in the RWJ Clinical Scholars Program when I got connected with the HRS. That's Larry McMahon, again, who set up all those interviews and encouraged us to come here to Michigan, Joel Howell, Rod Hayward, again, amazing mentors. Mark Fendrick and Mike Chern, who were also really important early in my career. I have a picture of Kang's there, because for some reason, every meeting that we had had to be at Kang's. So I ate a lot of Korean food as an assistant professor there. The VA, Annaharbor Health Care System, again, amazing people there on the clinical side. Sandri St. Eve Kerr and amazing patients that I had there for 29 years. All right. Talk a little bit about some of the work we've done. Again, the Health and Retirement Study has been what I've done, the main thing I've been doing for the last 30 years or so And the HRS as Provost McCauley said is a large study here at Michigan a large enterprise with a huge team It a big survey that been going on since 1992 We interview about 20,000 adults across the United States. It's based at ISR, funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration. Interestingly, Congress actually directed the NIH to set up this study in the early 90s to gather information about the baby boomers as they were aging in order to understand health and retirement and how they interact among the baby boomers. We do face-to-face telephone web interviews. We make all of the HRS data public, so literally anyone around the world. Actually, there's some restrictions on that now. Most people around the world can get out our data to do scientific research across lots of different topics. There's been 9,000 publications. And we like to say right now there's literally one to two scientific publications that use HRS data, more than 500 published per year. So again, a public good for science. [75:00] Science is what we hope the HRS will be. Excuse me. Here's some of the things that we cover in the HRS. The cognitive function part is especially relevant for the work that I've done. We also link our survey data to administrative data like Medicare and Social Security information, which opens up interesting research. We collect blood now and do genetic work also. So trying to collect every possible kind of data that could inform aging in the United States and around the world. As Provost McCauley said, one of the amazing fun parts of being involved with the HRS over the last 30 years or so is that more than 40 countries now have started studies patterned on the HRS, and we have networks, including the HCAP network, which is a dementia sub-study, the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Project, that is focused on dementia in, again, these 40 countries around the world In the last five years or so there been a large increase in studies in Africa which has been fascinating So what kind of work have I done with colleagues in the HRS data This was one of my first papers with HRS data which is really just trying to understand how does dementia, cognitive decline in dementia, and I should say dementia is just decline in cognitive function that is severe enough to cause the loss of independence. and, again, not surprisingly, increasing amounts of care provided by families as cognitive impairment increases. Again, not too surprising, but prior to the HRS, prior to regulars, including cognition in a survey like this, this kind of work really couldn't be done. So to try to put caregiving and the burden of families on the book, so to speak, I think was what we were trying to do with this paper. And sort of the methods of that paper we built on, and especially Michael Hurd led work using all different kinds of economic data and cost data in the HRS to try to understand the full monetary costs of dementia in the United States And what we found there this is sort of a pie chart to understand the different amounts of cost or the proportion of costs in these various categories The big picture punchline was the economic impact of a single case of dementia is about $50,000 per case. This is in 2010, about $200 billion cost to the country nationwide. And again, you can see the large orange slice is family care, just the amount of care that families need to provide in order to support people with dementia is really the bulk of the costs. Nursing homes and other long-term care is another large piece of the pie. And then what the HRS, since it's longitudinal, what we're able to do with a study like this is to try to look over time and see trends in various chronic diseases. Is the population getting more diabetes, more heart disease, or less? And we've done the same with dementia in the HRS. And the yellow bar there is the prevalence of dementia in 2000 which was about 11 for the 65 population and then in 2012 it actually lower So this optimistic finding of a decrease in dementia risk over time among older adults has been found in many high-income countries around the world, and that's some of the work that we're doing is to compare these trends across the world. What might be causing that? One likely cause for the decrease in risk is the increase in the amount of education that people are getting. Education seems to be very, sort of back to the question in John's presentation, education very important for strengthening your brain, basically, by challenging your brain. The connections between the synapses increase, and you're able to handle the pathologies that build up during your life. Also probably treating cardiovascular risks better, and maybe even environmental exposures. Things like taking the lead out of gas may have been one thing that's improved or decreased dementia risk over time. [80:00] Moving on to some of the junior folks I've worked with and their work. Jack Awashina is a critical care doctor who was here. I was lucky to get connected with right when he started on faculty here. Jack did the same MD-PhD program that I did in Chicago. He did a really... important and impactful study using the Medicare data that we're linked to with the survey data on cognition and physical function to show that after sepsis, which is a very severe infection-- people have learned more about that after COVID-- a severe infection that sort of makes your organ systems go haywire. About 50% of people die with sepsis. But what happens to people that survive in the ICU? pioneered the work on understanding what's the long-term outcomes. He showed here with the HRS and Medicare data that there was significant increase in the likelihood of significant cognitive impairment even up to six years after the episode of sepsis. Just to highlight the international data and how those can be used, Hwa-Jung Choi, another wonderful colleague who I've worked with for a while, an economist here at Michigan, looked to compare health outcomes among high and low income adults. in The U.S. versus England, using our... English colleague study that's patterned on the HRS in England. The darker upper lines there are the US. The lower lines are England. And what this is showing is different chronic diseases up on the... on the graphs is more disease, down is lower, and going from low income on the left to high income on the right. And the punchline of this is that we have more chronic disease here than in England across all of these, and the differences are much greater among those with low income. So much of the difference in risk and chronic disease is focused at the low end of the income here in the United States. All right, just to finish up, I wanted to highlight again the amazing junior faculty that I've been working with, Lindsay Kobayashi, who's an associate professor in the School of Public Health, has been doing HRS and HCAP work in South Africa and the European Union. the HCAP International Network with me now, and has really done amazing work on understanding and harmonizing these data across countries. Can't go into it now. It could be a five-day seminar, but how you measure something in one country and change languages and change cultures, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to understand the data. if those measures are comparable. Josh Ehrlich is an ophthalmologist here and associate professor in the med school. He's just started a study in Kenya with the HRS. He's directing a new Center on Sensory Health and Aging Research to understand how sensory deprivation, or sensory impairment, I should say, affects aging and the brain. the HRS, HCAP, into a study in Corpus Christi that Lewis Morgenstern has been running for a couple of decades now, and also in Nepal, and again working on understanding how you harmonize these measures. David Flood, another great junior colleague in the medical school, assistant professor just starting up a study in Guatemala, and leading both population-based and clinic-based studies in Guatemala. I'm very happy that these... Amazing junior folks are picking up the baton. I think the stakes are high. As you know, democracies depend on fact-based debate, using reliable data on the population, and the impact of government policies when government leaders tell lies, and disregard scientific evidence when implementing policy. I think the work of studies like the HRS and institutions like ISR in Michigan take on even greater importance. All right, so to conclude, I'm going to put my... white coat back on to give you some hopefully actionable things you can do to reduce your risk of dementia. This is based on our research with the HRS and other many other people who are working in this area. But so first, to reduce your risk of dementia, a very reliable intervention is to die young. Most of my patients... are interested in that. [85:00] That advice. But-- and that's a joke, of course. But just to remind us that dementia is important now, because we're all living much longer than we were 20, 30, 40 years ago. The increase in life expectancy is why dementia is such an important thing to look at now. Choosing educated and wealthy parents is also another good thing to do if you can do it. Again, health, not just dementia, but all health in the United States is very much patterned socioeconomically, as Hua Zhang's paper said. Now the actual things, walk, physical activity is the one thing I tell all my patients. Do that if you can't do anything else. It's, as we say, the only silver bullet in medicine. It decreases risks for everything, basically. So walk. I tell people to talk. Stay connected to friends and family and organizations. Staying connected, again, continuing to exercise your brain seems really important, including with reading and learning. Control your blood pressures, other cardiovascular risks. Get enough sleep. And again, vision and hearing impairment. Get your cataracts fixed. Use your hearing aids if you need them. So thank you again to the University of Michigan, from my whole family, to all my colleagues in general medicine and the HRS. uh... I literally could have stood here for 25 minutes talking only about all of the amazing people I've worked with. Say thanks to everyone who I didn't have time to mention, participants in the HRS, and again to Regula, Herzog, and Bob Willis for starting me on this path. Thanks very much. Thank you. We have time for questions and microphone to pass. We have one on the front here. Thank you. Yes, in your conclusion, one of the things that you seem to admit, and based on Dr. Neal-Bernard-Utz, this is me, Dean Ornish, his recent study with nutrition, a whole food plant-based diet. That is a great question. Yeah, so I think What you eat matters a lot. Yes. So I did leave that out. And I would say one of the weaknesses, or one of the A difficult thing to collect data on in populations is diet. And that could be one reason why I haven't focused on that. In the HRS, we've asked about diet a number of times, but it's very Difficult data to collect. So in population studies, We may study that a little bit less. But I definitely think-- It was included a bit in the cardiovascular risks, but yes, certainly what you eat Sleep, sort of the things that you do every day are important for risk. Thank you. Thank you. Question here and then right behind. Ken, great talk. Congratulations. Thanks. I am not up to speed on the incidence of dementia, so those were very interesting data showing a decline. And I saw 2012, so I'm wondering if we have an update, number one. And number two, I'm surprised to have that finding as awareness of dementia has increased in diagnostic development improvements have been made, I think clinicians are more aware of this, so I We're sort of bucking the trend there, at least based on that data. Any update there and any thoughts related to that? Great question. Chris, thank you. There have been other studies that have-- our group has not actually done an additional update to that. We looked sort of early on, 1993 to 2000 and 2012, and found this decline. That decline seems to have continued in the United States and other high-income countries. Through 2020, there's a hint that it's leveled off and might even be going back up. Thoughts are kind of big increase in obesity and diabetes and that-- the increased risk there. And again, in other countries, similar work is going on. And we hope, again, this HCAP network will allow us to understand these trends around the world. But again, there's some concerning either flattening off or maybe even an increase due to some due to other trends in other chronic diseases? Question there? I'll start by asking you the end of the question, which is thoughts on the blood-brain barrier and its role [90:00] what's happening with Alzheimer's. to me mainly epidemiological rather than pathophysiologic. I think COVID raised questions of brain fog and other things that may have an influence that uh, Lead toward... uh, dementia or decreased cognition. And I wondered if there's specific research on blood-brain barrier. lead and pollution and other things that make it through. Yeah. Yeah, great question. In talks, I have a slide that It reemphasizes how important blood flow to the brain is. Evolution shows us that because the brain is about 5% of our body weight, and it gets about 20% of the blood that comes out of our heart. So that's telling us something about how important blood flow is to the brain. So I guess a couple of things-- and I should say, I'm not an expert John studies those neurons microscopically. I don't. But a couple of things to your question. One of the things we've learned in population-based studies that collect brain autopsy data over the last 30 years or so is that Almost everyone who has dementia has several pathologies going on in their brain. Alzheimer's disease is the bad proteins, amyloid and tau. Most people also have strokes or changes that have-- small strokes or changes related to hypertension that have affected things like the blood-brain barrier, which increases the risk for inflammation in the brain and increases the likelihood of death of those cells. Absolutely, blood flow and the cardiovascular risk is important. Jack Awashina, who I mentioned, has been doing some of the studies on blood brain fog and sort of long COVID and how that might be affecting the brain. So, trying to learn more about that, but don't have great answers for you just yet. Please join me in thanking Professor Longa, our distinguished university professor. Thanks. This concludes our session. There's a reception that will begin immediately, and please join me in recognizing our three distinguished university professors once again for their wonderful lecture.