louis and an eric kandel. he is as you know a nobel laureate and tells us what it is we're about to see and talk about. >> we're full of stories about alzheimers. many people have been touched about it, their parents, grandparents. we know also that there's something called age-related memory loss. help me understand what we want to do discover in this conversation. >> as you pointed out, it's very helpful to divide memory loss with age into two categories. what is called age-related memory loss, normal aging or benign forgetfulness and dim end has. it's part of the normal aging process. just like your muscles might get weaker if you don't exercise them a lot you get stiffer. so there is a weakening with age. this is contrast to dementia which is a progressive much more serious disease and has impact in other aspects in memory storage. with normal aging there's good news as you'll hear from david holtzman there are ways to counter active. running two television programs the same day as what we're doing. >> ros

in fact, i started in the md ph.d program with eric kandel. i never finished the ph.d part but it was very much an academic endeavor for me. >> rose: but then you itched to thinking that you wanted to deal with patients. and fact you wanted to be somehow a clinical physician. >> actually, that's true. that did partly happen. like i said, i might have blufd a little bit in my interviews but then-- . >> rose: but you came back to it. >> then once i was in the clinics, discovered that i actually really, really enjoyed it. >> rose: the patient stuff. >> the patient stuff, just being with patients,it's a completely different source of satisfaction. and it could be frustrating, you know, right now i still see patients half day a week. and i don't really have to. most of my salary comes from funded grants, i do mainly research but i would never stop seeing patients because it really is something very different t keeps me grounded. it keeps my science focused on the important questions. >> rose: tell me about the joy of medical researchthe act of disc