High-profile schemes to defraud the elderly of their lifetime savings have headlined top newspapers and tabloids alike. There was Brooke Astor, whose son and attorney were convicted of criminal fraud, Anna Nicole Smith and the fight over J. Edgar Marshall’s inheritance, and Huguette Clark, a multi-billionaire who lived for years in a hospital and whose death prompted a criminal investigation into her donations and inheritance. Unfortunately, these notorious cases are merely the tip of a vast and growing iceberg of financial fraud against the elderly. In 2011, Metlife Mature Market Institute estimated an annual loss of $2.9 billion in fraud against elders. Recent surveys indicate that more than 7.3 million Americans over 65 have been victims of financial fraud. As crime rates — and vulnerable populations — increase, the scientific and legal communities must pool our ever-increasing knowledge and resources to protect elderly family members.

Read the full article on the Huffington Post, published February 21, 2014. By Bruce H. Price, MD and Ekaterina Pivovarova, PhD. Written with Judith G. Edersheim, JD, MD.

For further resources on elder fraud and decision making, see the reference materials from our December 2013 event Capacity, Decision-Making and the Elderly: Brain Science Meets the Law, and follow-up article in the Boston Globe “Scammers take aim at aging population,” by event moderator and Globe reporter Kay Lazar.

By Erika Hayasaki | The Atlantic | January 9, 2014

While Alzheimer’s usually affects older people, and is detected as a person begins to lose memory, frontotemporal dementia causes people to lose their personalities first, and usually hits in the prime of their lives — the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Over the last decade, new research in patients with frontotemporal dementia and other illnesses, has helped neuroscientists understand more about the roles different parts of the brain play in where our personalities come from.

A study released in October by Dr. Brad Dickerson, [Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett,] and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry pinpointed regions in the brain that showed atrophy from frontotemporal dementia and found that those with the most damage to the “perception network” (amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, superior temporal, and fusiform cortex) also showed the most prominent difficulty responding to social cues, facial expressions, and eye gaze, and had the most trouble interpreting gestures and body language—the kind of cues that sarcasm relies on.

Read the full article at The Atlantic Monthly.

Bruce H. Price, M.D. and Meredith Vieira at the Harvard Alzheimer’s Symposium

On Saturday, September 28, 2013, CLBB co-director Bruce Price, M.D. was one of the featured speakers at the first annual Harvard Alzheimer’s Symposium. Sponsored by the Harvard College Alzheimer’s Buddies program and hosted by television personality Meredith Vieira, the event brought together experts, those affected by the illness, and students.

“The Harvard Alzheimer’s Symposium is not just an effort to raise awareness, but also an effort to turn that awareness into active contribution in the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease,” Vieira said.

According to Harvard Medical School professor Ruth Kandel, Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., affecting about 5.4 million Americans, or one in nine elderly people.

CLBB is actively at work on ways to protect those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementing illness, like Parkinson’s Disease, from financial fraud and other forms of abuse.

Alzheimer’s Buddies is an organization that pairs high school and college students with patients suffering from dementia.