A Time of Forgetting: Menopause May Hold a Key to Understanding the Development of Alzheimer?s Disease.

One day in the mid-1980s, at New York City's Rockefeller Hospital, two scientists met at opposite poles of their careers. Roberta Diaz Brinton (Figure 1) was a newly minted Ph.D. and a postdoctoral researcher at the hospital, where she was studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms of learning and memory. Dr. Rowena Ansbacher was a patient who'd spent her working life at the University of Vermont as a passionate scholar of Adlerian psychology. The pair clicked immediately, playfully bantering at times or expounding on Alfred Adler's ideas, which shaped much of the field of psychology in the 20th century. Afterward, Brinton walked Ansbacher back to her room and bid her goodnight. Half a minute later, she knocked on the door and entered her room.