Duke Han Seminar

Speaker: Duke Han (University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology)

Title: Financial Decision Making and Fraud In Older Age: Neuropsychology, Neuroimaging, and Policy Considerations

Abstract: Financial exploitation can have a broad, devastating impact on the health, wellbeing, and independence of older adults. A portion of older adults may be vulnerable to financial exploitation due to poor decision making; however, the reasons for this are poorly understood. We and others have recently implicated poor financial decision making as an early sign of Alzheimer’s Disease. Some have argued that poor decision making may be due to poor cognition; however, many cognitively intact older adults find themselves scammed or defrauded, pointing to other factors beyond cognitive ability. While multiple factors are likely involved, one possibility may be early subtle brain changes in structure and function in regions known to be susceptible to age-associated neuropathology. This presentation will describe neuropsychological, neuroimaging, behavioral economics, gerontological, and other approaches to understanding financial exploitation risk in older age. Recent work from our laboratory on the causes, context, and consequences of financial exploitation in older adults will be highlighted. In conclusion, implications for public policy will be discussed.

Biography:

Duke Han, PhD, is a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Neuropsychology, Director of the Neuropsychology Division in the Department of Family Medicine, and a tenured Full Professor of Family Medicine, Neurology, Psychology, and Gerontology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in psychology with a specialization in neuroscience from Duke University, and his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. He received training in clinical neuropsychology and experimental neuroimaging techniques through various programs of Harvard Medical School's Brigham and Women's Hospital. He continued his clinical neuropsychology and neuroimaging activities during his internship and postdoctoral fellowship years at UCSD and the San Diego VA Healthcare System. He maintains an active research collaboration with the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center (RADC) of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, where he was formally a tenured faculty member. Dr. Han is interested in the factors that affect cognition and decision making in aging. He also has special interests in using novel neuroimaging and statistical approaches to better understand these factors. He was the recipient of the prestigious Paul B. Beeson Career Development Award in aging research, which is supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR). He is the primary investigator on numerous research grants extramurally funded by the NIH and private foundations. Dr. Han is actively involved in peer-review of aging and Alzheimer’s Disease research grants for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and has served as the Chair of the NIA Clinical and Translational Research of Aging Review Committee (NIA-T) and the Neuroscience of Aging Review Committee (NIA-N). Dr. Han is an inaugural Governance Committee member of the Global Council on Brain Health, an international independent science collaborative convened by AARP and tasked with offering the aging public the best possible advice about brain health. In 2021, he was elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, an honor conveyed for “evidence of unusual and outstanding contributions or performance in the field of psychology." His work has been featured in multiple international media outlets, including Reuters, CBS, PBS, Forbes, Fox Business News, and U.S. News and World Report.

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