Brookhaven Lecture

If you are a young man driving your wife and her parents, be very careful. If you are involved in a serious car accident, you and your mother-in-law are most likely to survive. This �warning� is one conclusion of Anat Biegon�s upcoming 414th Brookhaven Lecture, entitled �Of Boys and Girls and Bumps on the Head.� Joanna Fowler of the Chemistry Department, Director of BNL�s Translational Neuroimaging Center, will introduce the lecturer. Biegon, a senior medical scientist in the Medical Department, will detail how research has refined scientists� view of gender differences in the prevalence and outcome of diseases affecting the brain. Although it has been well documented that gender affects the prevalence of disorders such as depression and Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, recent head injury trials suggest that both age and sex affect the likelihood and degree of recovery from injuries to the brain. While girls are more likely to die following a traumatic brain injury than boys, that result is reversed after the age of 50, when men die twice as often. Everyone is welcome to join Biegon on April 19 at 4 p.m. in Berkner Hall to learn more about this exciting new field of research and what it has revealed about the roles of age and gender in repairing brain injuries.