Neuroscientists Heather Berlin and Yasmin Hurd join neuropsychologist Miguel Arce Renteria and social worker Adina Segal to discuss the scientific issues behind the new comedy THE RESERVOIR

From left, Dr. Heather Berlin, Dr. Yasmin Hurd, Dr. Miguel Arce Renteria, Adina Segal

Everyone attending the 7:00 PM performance on Thursday, March 5 at the Linda Gross Theater of THE RESERVOIR, the brilliant new comedy by Jake Brasch, is encouraged to stay afterward for a stimulating discussion about the play with neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Heather Berlin, neuroscientist Yasmin Hurd, and neuropsychologist Miguel Arce Renteria. Adina Segal, senior navigator and community builder at CaringKind, will moderate the discussion about some of the scientific issues behind the play, including the causes and treatment of addiction, our current understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and much more. The audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and join the discussion.

The story of the play: Josh’s life is a mess. He’s moved home to Denver to get sober, but after years of drinking, the fog in his brain won’t lift. Struggling with memory loss, confusion, and shame, he finds himself strangely in step with his four aging grandparents. THE RESERVOIR is a funny, human play about memory, recovery, and the joys of cross-generational connection.

THE RESERVOIR, written by Jake Brasch and directed by Shelley Butler, is the 2026 EST/Sloan Project play and a co-production of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Atlantic Theater Company, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The play’s New York Off Broadway premiere began previews on February 5 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through March 22. You can purchase tickets here.

About the panelists

Dr. Heather Berlin

Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological disorders with the goal of developing novel treatments. She is also interested in the brain basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Dr. Berlin is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a passionate science communicator. She hosts the PBS Nova series Your Brain, and the Science of Perception Box podcast (the #1 Science podcast on Apple Podcasts during its run). 

Dr. Berlin also hosted PBS’ Science Goes to the Movies, and Discovery Channel’s Superhuman Showdown. She makes regular appearances on StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, BBC, History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, and TED, and was featured in the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy. She also co-wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway show, Off the Top, about the neuroscience of improvisation, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, Impulse Control.

Her new book, The Fine Art of Losing Control (Simon and Schuster), is slated for release in January 2027.

Dr. Yasmin Hurd

Dr. Yasmin Hurd is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Pharmacological Sciences, the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience, and the Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai. Dr. Hurd's multidisciplinary research investigates the neurobiology underlying addiction disorders and related psychiatric illnesses.  A translational approach is used to examine molecular and neurochemical events in the human brain and comparable animal models in order to ascertain neurobiological correlates of behavior.  A major focus of the research is directed to risk factors of substance use disorders including genetics as well as developmental exposure to drugs of abuse such as cannabis. Her team also conducts human clinical trials in developing novel therapies for opioid use disorder. Her work has been featured in various media including Time magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and on CNN, PBS NOVA, and Netflix as well as in a TEDMED talk. Based on her work, Dr. Hurd was inducted into both the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.  

Dr. Miguel Arce Renteria

Dr. Miguel Arce Rentería is an Assistant Professor of Neuropsychology at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain and the Department of Neurology at the Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Arce's research focuses on determining factors of reserve and resilience to cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) among racial/ethnic minorities both within the United States and abroad with an emphasis on understanding the role of bilingualism. Dr. Arce is also involved in outreach efforts to engage with diverse communities in ADRD research. He is the director of the Outreach, Recruitment and Engagement (ORE) Core for Columbia University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). 

About the Moderator

Adina Segal

Adina Segal, LCSW, is a clinical social worker with over 15 years of experience specializing in dementia care and complex caregiving dynamics. She serves as Senior Navigator and Community Builder at CaringKind, where she provides direct clinical support to individuals and families impacted by dementia.

Her primary focus is supporting caregivers as they navigate challenging behavioral symptoms, shifting family roles, and complex relational dynamics. She is frequently consulted on high-complexity cases, including individuals living alone with dementia, family conflict, elder abuse concerns, and limited support systems, and works closely with caregivers of individuals with early-onset dementia. As part of her role, she also facilitates evidence-based Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) groups for individuals with early-stage dementia, provides individualized care planning around safety and long-term care transitions, and leads educational workshops while consulting with community organizations to strengthen dementia-informed care.

She previously served as Caregiver Program Director at Heights and Hills in Brooklyn and held clinical roles at Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services and Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services.

THE RESERVOIR began previews on February 5 and runs through March 22. You can purchase tickets here. The play is the 2026 mainstage production of the EST/Sloan Project, EST’s partnership with The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop new plays “exploring the world of science and technology,” an initiative now in its twenty-sixth year. 

Enjoy more related to THE RESERVOIR

Remembering the Complexity of Alzheimer’s Disease by Michael A. Yassa (program essay)

Playwright Jake Brasch and neurobiologist Stuart Firestein discuss THE RESERVOIR with Nick Dirks, president of The New York Academy of Sciences on the Shaping Science podcast (on YouTube; 50 mins)

Michael A. Yassa on the Complexity of Alzheimer’s Disease for THE RESERVOIR

The New York Off Broadway premiere of the 2026 EST/Sloan Project production, THE RESERVOIR, written by Jake Brasch and directed by Shelley Butler, a co-production of the Atlantic Theater Company, the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P.  Sloan Foundation, begins previews on February 5 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through March 22. You can purchase tickets here.

This 2025/2026 season marks the twenty-sixth anniversary of the EST/Sloan Project, the joint initiative between the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, “designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.” In that spirit, we offer this background essay on Alzheimer’s research by Michael A. Yassa, professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, and director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Remembering the Complexity of Alzheimer’s Disease

By Michael A. Yassa, Ph.D.

Memory is the sum of who we are. It is the bridge to our past and our future. It takes a fleeting moment in our consciousness and stretches it out over a lifetime. By the time you finish reading this sentence, the beginning of it has already become a memory. When this process works well, the brain can learn from experience, anticipate what may come next, and make decisions informed by what it has encountered before. Much of what feels stable in our lives depends on this quiet continuity, the ability to carry experience forward without noticing the work it takes.

I have to admit I’m a little biased in my infatuation, since memory is the topic of my research. But memory also matters for another, much more important reason. It is one of the most complex problems the brain has to solve. Creating lasting records of experience and using them later, often under very different conditions, requires coordination across many brain systems. Understanding how memory works turns out to be nearly as difficult as making it work at all.

“When memory begins to fail, the consequences are immediate and deeply personal”

When memory begins to fail, the consequences are immediate and deeply personal. In Alzheimer’s disease, this failure often shows up as the gradual loss of the very memories that anchor identity, relationships, and a sense of continuity in one’s own life. Memory loss is often the earliest and most recognizable sign, either to the person or to their loved ones, that something is wrong. To understand why this happens, it helps to be clear about what memory depends on in the first place.

At a biological level, memory depends on the brain’s capacity to change with experience. We refer to this capacity as learning or plasticity. Learning reflects change as it occurs within neural circuits. Memory reflects what remains once those changes have stabilized, sometimes imperfectly. Importantly, plasticity is not confined to a single system or region. Circuits involved in perception, movement, emotion, and decision-making all adjust with experience. These same mechanisms support the development of skills and habits, the accumulation of knowledge over time, and recovery after injury, when surviving circuits reorganize to maintain function.

What’s incredible is the enduring capacity we have for doing such heavy lifting. The adult human brain contains roughly 86 billion cells, connected by more than a quadrillion synapses. Despite traditional wisdom, those cells do not simply die off as we get older. What does change with age is how easily new connections are formed and reshaped. The machinery that supports plasticity gets sluggish. When that happens, the brain leans more heavily on circuits it has already built and on strategies shaped by years of experience. That shift is what we mean when we talk about compensation.

“Learning and memory systems don’t simply degrade. They adjust how effort and resources are allocated as demands change.”

Aging looks different when you think about it this way. Learning and memory systems don’t simply degrade. They adjust how effort and resources are allocated as demands change. Representations become more selective, favoring stability and efficiency over constant updating.

Once learning and memory are understood as part of a distributed, adaptive system, differences in cognitive function across people make sense. Brains are shaped not only by genetics, but by a lifetime of experience, lifestyle, health, disease, and environment. Those influences build up slowly. Over time, they shape how neural systems coordinate, compensate, and respond when they’re pushed.

This becomes especially relevant in Alzheimer’s disease. For many years, the condition was framed through a relatively simple biological story that begins with accumulation of protein pathology and ends with memory loss. The problem was not that this account was entirely wrong, but that it was incomplete. By treating Alzheimer’s as a single disease with a single underlying cause, it encouraged the search for a single solution. The repeated failure of these approaches forces us to step back for a moment and reconsider our approach.

It has now become clear that Alzheimer’s does not unfold through one process at a time. Changes in inflammation, metabolism, blood flow, neural activity, and protein misfolding emerge together and influence one another as time goes on. What matters is how these changes reshape the way brain networks function and how flexible patterns of activity that once supported learning and memory gradually give way to more rigid patterns that are less capable of learning and adapting.

Compensation plays a different role once Alzheimer’s disease enters the picture. Early in the course of the disease, the same adaptive mechanisms that support healthy aging can help maintain memory, even as biological disruption begins. Networks adjust, alternative pathways are used, and function is preserved. For a while, this works. But compensation has limits. As pressures continue to build, the brain’s responses become narrower and less flexible. What once supported adaptation gradually stops working and memory starts to falter. At that point, the system itself has shifted. This is what we mean by failed compensation.

“By the time memory problems are obvious, the brain is often operating under conditions shaped by years of adjustment and reorganization.“

This helps explain why so many treatments have struggled when introduced late. By the time memory problems are obvious, the brain is often operating under conditions shaped by years of adjustment and reorganization. Removing one source of disruption at that stage does not restore earlier patterns of function, because the system has already settled into a different mode.

The same insight has reshaped how the disease is monitored and when intervention is likely to matter. Advances in brain imaging, fluid biomarkers, and physiological measures now allow researchers and clinicians to follow change as it unfolds rather than relying on single snapshots. Timing matters because learning and compensation are still active early on, when brain networks retain more flexibility. At those stages, interventions are better suited to supporting effective compensation and slowing further change than to reversing damage after widespread reorganization has taken hold.

Alzheimer’s disease makes the fragility of memory visible. It shows how much of who we are depends on the ability to hold onto the past and how deeply that ability is woven into relationships, identity, and everyday life. Understanding and addressing this devastating disease requires tools that can track change over time and account for how memory systems respond under pressure. But it also requires accepting that memory is not a single thing that fails all at once. It is a process that adapts, compensates, and eventually struggles under the weight of disruption. Meeting the disease on its own terms means grappling with that complexity to better understand what is being lost, and what can still be preserved.

About the Author

Michael A. Yassa

Michael A. Yassa, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, where he studies memory, brain aging, and Alzheimer’s disease. His work focuses on how brain systems adapt over time and how disruptions in those systems contribute to cognitive decline.

The images in this post are taken from “The Beginning of the End for Alzheimer’s Disease,” an April 2025 lecture by Michael A. Yassa.

THE RESERVOIR begins previews on February 5 and runs through March 22. You can purchase tickets here.

Jake Brasch on alcoholism, mountains, Alzheimer’s, and THE RESERVOIR

Jake Brasch

Can brain exercises stave off dementia? On Monday, March 22, at 4:00 PM the EST/Sloan First Light Festival  presents the first public reading (free on Zoom) of THE RESERVOIR, Jake Brasch’s new play about a young writer who, struggling with alcoholism and memory loss, finds unexpected bonds with his quirky grandparents. The playwright has lots more to tell.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

How did THE RESERVOIR come to be?

This play has been trying to fight its way out of me for years. When I got the commission, there was no turning back. 

I set out to explore Alzheimer’s Disease and alcoholism, diseases that have plagued my family for many moons. Along the way, I discovered I was writing a love letter to my grandparents. 

You describe Josh, your main character, as 22 years old in 2014-2015. “A queer, neurotic, lost soul. Dropout. Alcoholic. Wannabe writer. A white Jew with Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Nebraskan roots.” Dare I ask how much of your play is autobiographical? Or would it be better to ask how much is not?

You got me!

Indeed, this is a very personal piece. Too personal? Maybe! There were definitely “WHY THE HELL AM I DOING THIS?!” moments. But for the most part, I found strength in writing into this painful chapter of my life. I’m a fundamentally different person than I was seven years ago and it felt empowering to remember that. 

That being said, the play is not strictly autobiographical. The constraints of the commission and the needs of the piece steered me away from my experience. I also took some creative license to protect my heart and my family. It feels important to be very clear about this: Josh’s story is not my story. A brilliant friend of mine recently wrote, “Most of us need a degree of artifice to say what we really think.” Paradoxically, I found that untethering Josh’s story from my own gave me permission to tell the truth. 

Much of the science in this play has to do with the concept of Cognitive Reserve and how it might be helpful in preventing or delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s. What kind of research did you do in writing this play? 

Figure illustrates how cognitive reserve develops over a lifespan. Figure courtesy of Frontiers of Psychology. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01814/full

I went on a deep dive into medical journal land. The more I read, the more I discovered how little we know about Alzheimer’s, specifically about how we might stave off its symptoms. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. People want to believe that all they have to do is play tennis, solve crossword puzzles, and memorize a list of our nation’s Vice Presidents, and all will be well. Yes, there are certain lifestyle factors that may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, but there is no formula, no proven regimen, no sure way to protect yourself from the disease.

Bleak? Oh yeah. But also, ultimately, freeing. We simply cannot know what lies ahead. Josh’s revelation in the play mirrors what I discovered in my research: the best way to protect oneself against the onset of Alzheimer’s is to lead a present, full, joyous, active, inquisitive, open, and loving life. 

Have your grandparents had the chance to read your play? How did they react?

Oh, how I wish I could share this with them.

Jake and his grandmother

Both of my maternal grandparents passed away a few years ago after battles with Alzheimer’s. My paternal grandfather died this year of complications from COVID-19. 

My paternal grandmother is in a memory care facility. She’s mostly nonverbal at this point and doesn’t seem to recognize me. I miss her more than I can say. If she were still herself, I’m guessing she would request a paper copy of the play to litter with brilliant, scathing, and hilarious notes in red colored pencil. I’d like to think she’d be both horrified and proud.

What do you want your audience to understand about the nature of alcoholism and the current treatment options for coping with it?

Addiction is brutal. Being inside of the disease of alcoholism was the scariest experience of my life. I wanted so badly to get out from under it, but the harder I tried to escape, the worse it got. At some point, I had to accept defeat and get help. For anyone going through it, don’t try to go it alone. I’m here. We’re here. Recovery is the foundation my life has been built upon and I wouldn’t have it any other way. As impossible as it may seem, there’s a lighter life on the other side.

Jewish music and themes run through many of your plays. What has being a Jew meant to you?

Being a Jew has meant a lot to me. Much to unpack here!

My father, a fervent atheist, insisted I attend way too much religious school, which we can attribute to good old-fashioned Jewish guilt. I have at least an hour and a half of Hebrew chanting memorized, but I can’t say I know what any of it means. I know what we do, but I don’t know why! It’s just what we do! And I’ve come to love it! Plus great food and ancestral trauma! I think I’ll probably do the same thing to my poor children! 

In all seriousness, as I’ve become a spiritual person over the last few years, I’ve done a lot of thinking and writing about my Jewish roots. My faith today feels decidedly Jewish: I’m more concerned with what I do than what I believe.

You set your play in Colorado? Why Colorado?

Rocky Mountains outside Denver (Photo: Jake Brasch)

Because Colorado is awesome, bro! Party! Powder! Snowboarding! Sick!!!

I’m a proud Denverite, born and raised. The year I got sober, the mountains were there for me. Every time I looked west, I felt so delightfully small.  Mother Nature gave me breathing room and I’m forever grateful to her. I hope that’s in the play. 

Have you written any other science-related plays?

This is my first full-length with a science bent. I’ve written two other shorts for the EST/Sloan Project. One was about our national feral pig problem. The other just so happens to be debuting in the next couple of weeks on the brand new Youngblood Podcast (shameless plug)! It’s called Endogamy and it’s about Ashkenazi Judaism and genetics.  

What’s next for Jake Brasch?

Dinner! I’m making a chicken tagine with an olive and rosemary sourdough boule and a shaved fennel salad. After that, bedtime. And after that, here’s hoping for a lifetime of climbing mountains, telling stories, and basking in the sunlight of the spirit. 

The 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.