Dana Alliance members serve as ready resources for questions from journalists and lend their expertise to us as we devise new materials to inform the public. The Foundation’s News Office responds to specific queries from individual journalists through the Neuroscience Resource Center.
Journalists recognize the neuroscience resource service, which offers background information and connections to experts in neuroscience, as a reliable source. This year, reporters and editors representing print, broadcast, and the Internet media increasingly turned to Dana for assistance.
The news staff works with Dana Alliance staff on the Staying Sharp event series, reaching out to local media for each event, and provides media outreach for the New York Brain Bee competition.
News Office Print and Interactive Resources
The News Office produces several publications, as well as Web site content, marketing materials, and interactive member directories. Its annual Advances in Brain Research, which features interviews with leading neuroscientists on timely brain topics, this year covered visual processing and artistic genius; optical imaging; synaptic transmission; prefrontal cortex and frontal lobe disorders; frontotemporal dementia and language processing; basal ganglia; and surgical treatment of motor circuit disorders. Among the experts were Dana Alliance members Ann Graybiel, Ph.D., MIT; Mahlon DeLong, M.D., Emory University School of Medicine; Murray Grossman, M.D., University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institutes of Health (NIH); Margaret Livingstone, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School; and Terrence Sejnowski, Ph.D., Salk Institute for Biological Studies. All News Office publications are available via our Web site, www.dana.org.
For Brain Awareness Week 2006, the News Office distributed two new briefing papers. The first examined the implications of “environmental enrichment” on human brain health from birth to death. Contributors included Dana Alliance members Marilyn Albert, Ph.D., the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions; and William Greenough, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The second briefing paper reviewed how imaging studies are transforming understanding of the teenage brain as it grows. It detailed the work of Dana Alliance members Judith Rapoport, M.D., National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); and Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., NINDS, NIH.
The News Office continues to distribute the three arts education books that it produced: Partnering Arts Education: A Working Model from ArtsConnection, Acts of Achievement: The Role of Performing Art Centers in Education, and Planning an Arts-Centered School: A Handbook.
It also produces member resource directories, available in interactive CD format, for the European Dana Alliance for the Brain and the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. With searchable contact and biographical information, the resource directory CDs are distributed to selected journalists and to Alliance members, which helps them keep in contact with one another. This year, the News Office improved the online member forms; conducted updates for both directories, available for download electronically; and produced a new CD for European Dana Alliance members.