Imagine a world where innovative solutions for brain health could change your life and the lives of those you love. Daniel G. Amen, MD BEGINNINGS Maverick How It Began I am the middle sibling of seven children. Growing up, my father called me a maverick, which to him was NOT a good thing. 2 In 1972t he Army called my number and I was trained as an infantry medic, where my love of medicine was born. After realizing I truly hated sleeping in the mud or the thought of being shot at, I was retrained as an x-ray technician, and developed a passion for medical imaging. As our professors used to say, “How do you know unless you look?” “ How do you know unless you look?” 3 BEGINNINGS In 1979 when I was a second year medical student, someone in my family became seriously suicidal and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. I came to realize that if he helped her, which he did, it would not only save her life, but it could also help her children, and even her future grandchildren, as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. I fell in love with psychiatry because it has the potential to change generations of people. I fell in love with psychiatry because it has the potential to change generations of people. 4 1991, Fast forward to when I attended my first lecture on brain SPECT imaging. SPECT shows blood flow and activity patterns in the brain. It looks at how your brain works. SPECT was presented as a tool that could give us more information to help our psychiatric patients. In that lecture my two professional loves, medical imaging and psychiatry, came together and quite honestly revolutionized my life. Over the next 23 years my colleagues and I would build the world’s largest database of brain scans related to behavior on patients from over 111 countries. 5 WHAT CAN SPECT TELL US? 6 Healthy Scans SPECT basically tells us three things about brain function: good activity, too little activity or too much activity. Here is a healthy set of SPECT scans. The image on the left shows full, even, symmetrical activity. The color is not important; it’s the shape that matters. In the image on the right, red indicates the areas of increased activity. In a healthy scan, the back part of the brain Full, even, symmetrical activity. Areas of increased activity. is typically the most active. 7 WHAT CAN SPECT TELL US? HEALTHY STROKE VICTIM Here is a healthy scan compared to someone who had 2 strokes. Can you see the holes of inactivity? 8 HEALTHY ALZHEIMER’S This scan shows deterioration in the back half of the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient. Did you know that Alzheimer’s starts decades before you have any symptoms? 9 WHAT CAN SPECT TELL US? HEALTHY TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY Traumatic brain injury — your brain is very soft and your skull is very hard. 10