Mapping Alzheimer’s: UCSB’s Cristina Venegas follows a genetic puzzle tracing Alzheimer’s roots from Colombia to California

There’s a set of childhood memories that UC Santa Barbara film and media studies professor Cristina Venegas returns to once in a while, recollections that stand out because of their peculiar nature.

“I have memories of being a child in Montería, which is an interesting city, and it’s on the banks of the Sinú river,” she said of a municipality in her native northern Colombia. “I remember the town square facing the church where sometimes you could escape the  heat and humidity. And there I can almost still see people who would sit in the park who appeared to be mentally … gone… and people referred to them as ‘crazy.’ There was also an old man who taught me how to play the guitar. The wife walked around with a cardboard on her forehead all day repeatedly asking what time it was.”

Read the rest of the article in “The Current“