When Natascha Merten first arrived in Madison for a research internship in 2017 from Germany, she didn’t know how to stop the bus.
“I didn’t realize you had to pull the weird string hanging underneath the window,” she laughed. “Where I’m from, there’s a button that says ‘STOP.’ It’s pretty clear what that button does.”
Today, Merten has not only mastered Madison’s bus system, but she is also helping lead one of the most comprehensive studies on sensory and cognitive aging.
As an assistant professor at UW–Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, she leads the Beaver Dam Offspring Study–Neurocognitive Aging Study (BOSS-NCAS). With a background in neuroscience, a master’s in psychology, and a PhD in epidemiology, Merten is passionate about how senses and cognitive abilities change over time and how blood biomarkers might help identify early signs of age-related decline.
Her research builds on the long history of epidemiological sensory research at UW, including the Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study that began in the 1990s in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The study, which continued for more than 20 years, focused on hearing loss among adults.
The adult offspring of those participants were then invited to join the Beaver Dam Offspring Study (BOSS) in 2005, which followed BOSS participants over 10 years. Now, Merten’s team is inviting all previous BOSS participants to join an 18-year follow-up study, the BOSS-NCAS. This multigenerational design gives the team a unique chance to track how health outcomes evolve over time and across families.
This study is truly unique. “It’s the only one I know of that tracks hearing, vision, sense of smell, motor skills, and thinking abilities starting at around age 50—and we’ve kept following the same people ever since,” said Merten.
Other research studies on sensory aging have typically focused on people around age 70—making it hard to understand what happens earlier. The Beaver Dam Offspring Study fills that gap. “There’s no other study that has this kind of detailed information beginning in midlife,” Merten said.
“You cannot go back to that time point when they didn’t have the disease and that’s what we have,” said Merten. “We can watch who develops and who does not develop these age-related functional changes.”
Her dedication and research recently earned her the Vilas Early-Career Investigator Award from UW–Madison. The award will help her keep growing the study, support her team, and mentor the next generation of researchers.
With engaged participants and groundbreaking data in hand, Merten is optimistic about the discoveries yet to come—and the difference they could make in helping people live longer, healthier, and fuller lives.