Roger Anunsen: The science of the aging brain

Over the course of his life, Roger Anun­sen has been and done many things: A lawyer, teacher, activ­i­ties direc­tor for a local assist­ed-liv­ing home.

He’s also been a pio­neer in the field of brain sci­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it applies in aging. And as one of this year’s speak­ers at TEDxSalem, he’s going to give a glimpse into the future of how sci­ence will alter its under­stand­ing of aging in the brain.

Anun­sen, a Salem native who can trace his Ore­gon roots back to his great-grand­par­ents, start­ed his career as an attor­ney. After grad­u­at­ing from law school at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty, he went on to work with the Linn Coun­ty pub­lic defend­ers, build­ing a 26-year career in tri­al law.

But 1998, he says, was the year of the burnout.

“I was try­ing to work hard­er instead of smarter,” he said. “I was work­ing longer and longer and I lost my pas­sion for law.”

Anun­sen took a job a few days a week dri­ving a van with an assist­ed-liv­ing facil­i­ty in Salem. Not long after that, he was asked if he want­ed to take over as activ­i­ties direc­tor — a job, he was delight­ed to find, he loved.

“I just treat­ed them all like my Nana,” he said. “I learned from my grand­moth­er, when you ask some­one who is old­er ‘How are you?’ it’s a dead-end ques­tion.”

By that, he means, is that ask­ing some­one how they are tends to elic­it what Anun­sen calls The Organ Recital: A list­ing of com­plaints of the var­i­ous aches and pains that accom­pa­ny grow­ing old­er. When your first response is such a neg­a­tive focus, he explains, it releas­es a chem­i­cal in the human body that just makes it worse.

Instead, he began build­ing activ­i­ties to shift the focus to fun, con­fi­dence-build­ing activ­i­ties.

“I was just try­ing to find some­thing to keep their atten­tion,” he said. “I would just keep what worked and threw out what did­n’t.”

His tech­niques drew the atten­tion of a grad­u­ate stu­dent who hap­pened to be in the build­ing, who then went on to tell their pro­fes­sor. Before long, Anun­sen said, groups of aca­d­e­mics were com­ing to study what he was doing.

“They asked me, if we did clin­i­cal tri­als, would you be will­ing?” he remem­bered. “I did­n’t even know what a clin­i­cal tri­al was.”

Now, Anun­sen is teach­ing cours­es at Port­land Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege; he’s worked for AARP design­ing brain health pro­grams and was a vot­ing del­e­gate at the White House Con­fer­ence on Aging; he’s even had a sci­en­tif­ic paper pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Men­tal Health and Aging.

“It’s excit­ing, and it seems to be get­ting bet­ter,” he said. “It’s hard­er than rock­et sci­ence, but once you boil it down, it’s just get­ting back con­trol.”

Anun­sen keeps up-to-date on the lat­est research being pub­lished on the sub­ject. Just a few weeks ago, there was a par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilling announce­ment made at a glob­al brain sci­ence con­fer­ence that he said fits in nice­ly with his TED talk — but you’ll have to hear him explain it.

“Knowl­edge is pow­er,” he said, when asked what he hopes peo­ple will gain from his TED talk. “And cog­ni­tive decline is not — bold, under­lined — inevitable. There needs to be a nation­al pol­i­cy to edu­cate the pub­lic.”

Get your tick­ets at the His­toric Elsi­nore The­atre or online: http://goo.gl/pI3UJ2.