Dementia Researcher Blogs

Rahul Sidhu narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.

Rahul is a regular Dementia Researcher blogger, usually writing about life as a PhD student and his work on heart disease and dementia. This time he goes back further, to his grandad, who lived with vascular dementia through Rahul's teenage years and died in 2019. Rahul describes the man his grandad was before dementia, a doctor who survived Partition and rebuilt his life in England, then walks through how the disease changed him, the family's decision to move him into a nursing home, and the stigma around dementia that he says still exists in many South Asian communities including his own. Worth reading whenever the day-to-day of research starts to feel disconnected from why you started it.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-my-grandads-story-why-i-became-a-neuroscientist/

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​Rahul Sidhu is a PhD student at The University of Sheffield, focusing on the effects of heart disease on dementia in preclinical models of Alzheimer's disease. His research aims to uncover how cardiovascular health influences neurodegenerative conditions, potentially leading to novel therapeutic strategies.​ Find Rahul on LinkedIn

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

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Dr Yvonne Couch narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

Yvonne got pulled into an accidental group chat argument with colleagues about whether the brain's glymphatic system actually exists, and it escalated into a full blown journal club debate.

In this blog she walks through the case for it: how the lymphatic system works everywhere else in the body, why the brain's tightly packed vasculature makes a proper lymphatic network hard to picture, and how a 2012 paper from Maiken Nedergaard's group tied two older observations together into the modern glymphatic hypothesis. She then sets out where the critics push back, from the discovery of cerebral amyloid angiopathy patterns that do not fit a directional flow, to modelling that questions whether arterial pulsation can move enough fluid, to the 2015 discovery of actual lymphatic vessels in the meninges. Worth reading if you have ever nodded along to "the brain flushes itself while you sleep" without knowing quite how contested that sentence is.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-brain-drain-the-controversy-around-glymphatics/

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Dr Yvonne Couch is an Associate Professor of Neuroimmunology at the University of Oxford. Yvonne studies the role of extracellular vesicles and their role in changing the function of the vasculature after stroke, aiming to discover why the prevalence of dementia after stroke is three times higher than the average. Her passion for problem-solving and love of science drive her to advance our knowledge of disease. Yvonne shares her opinions, talks about science and explores different career topics in her monthly blogs - she does a great job of narrating, too.

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

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Dr Emma Law narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

The FDA has cleared Roche's Elecsys pTau217 blood test to help identify amyloid pathology in people aged 55 and over who are already showing signs of cognitive decline. Most of the attention has gone to what that means for diagnosis and for access to new treatments. In this blog, Emma takes a different angle, asking what it changes for the people who design and deliver dementia studies. Her view is that a clearance like this reshapes the economics of recruitment, opens up questions about the earliest stages of disease that were previously too expensive to ask, and moves some of the most important work towards understanding how biomarkers get used in practice rather than towards discovering new ones. She is also clear that imaging is not being replaced, and that the researchers who do best over the next decade will be the ones who know how to combine the two.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/ptau217-blood-test-what-fda-clearance-means/

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Dr Emma Law is a Strategic Manager for the Neuroprogressive and Dementia Network in Scotland. Emma has 13 years of experience as a Clinical Trials Network Manager and over 35 years of experience as a Nurse, many of which were spent in the delivery of Clinical Research Trials. Emma completed her PhD and is passionate about giving people living with dementia and their carers access to participate in research.

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

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Dr Ajantha Abey narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.

In part one, Ajantha covered the practical lab-hacks: experiment numbering, file naming, reference managers and spreadsheets. This time he moves up a level, to the habits that sit around the experiments rather than inside them. He makes the case for recording why you made a decision and not just what you did, keeping every half-formed idea in one running list, building relationships with colleagues long before you need a protocol or a reference, going to small local meetings from the very start, saying yes to teaching, outreach and committee work, and paying attention to what comes after the PhD while there is still time to explore it. None of it is glamorous, and Ajantha is the first to say so. But the argument he makes is that a PhD is a marathon, and the systems you set up in year one are the ones that stop your future self getting lost.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-more-research-habits-i-wish-id-started-earlier-in-my-phd/

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Dr Ajantha Abey is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Kavli Institute at University of Oxford. He is interested in the cellular mechanisms of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases of the ageing brain. Previously, having previoulsy explored neuropathology in dogs with dementia and potential stem cell replacement therapies. He now uses induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons to try and model selective neuronal vulnerability: the phenomenon where some cells die but others remain resilient to neurodegenerative diseases.

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

--

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Dr Connor Richardson narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.

Connor works in dementia epidemiology, so when he wondered whether LGBT people face a higher risk of dementia, he assumed the answer was sitting in a paper somewhere waiting to be looked up. It mostly isn't. There is one large study with a marginal signal, a second with an outcome that may not measure what we want it to, and a third that finds nothing at all. Connor walks through what each one can and cannot tell us, then arrives at the reason they disagree, which turns out to have less to do with LGBT people and more to do with the questions our cohorts were never designed to ask. Worth reading if you have ever assumed a variable would be there when you went looking for it.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-were-still-not-counting-lgbt-people-in-dementia-research/

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Dr Connor Richardson is a Neuro-epidemiology Research Associate at The University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on using advanced statistical modelling and machine learning to measure dementia risk. Connor blogs about his research, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, and sometimes his Pomapoo’s.

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

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Professor Louise Serpell narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

What does a grant panel member actually notice when they open your application? This blog walks through a grant from the reviewer's side of the desk, covering the short summary, the lay summary, the case for support, and the often underexplained art of justifying your costings. It also covers what happens once a decision is close: responding to reviewers' comments and getting through the interview. Practical, panel-tested advice for anyone about to submit.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-getting-a-grant-funded-a-view-from-the-panel/

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Professor Louise Serpell is an Emerita Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on how proteins misfold and form amyloid structures linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions, using approaches from structural biology and molecular biophysics. Louise completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford and later established her own research group in the UK. Alongside her research career, she has been active in mentoring, public engagement, and supporting early career researchers. Find Louise on LinkedIn

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you from University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.

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Beccy Owen narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

What if the thing you've been dreading since day one of your PhD turns out to be the best week of work you do all year? A seminar isn't an exam, and the audience isn't waiting to catch you out. In this blog, Beccy talks through what actually made the difference: pulling a year of scattered experiments into one place, working out the story before opening PowerPoint, stripping the text off her slides, and practising until she was sick of the sound of her own voice. There's also a decent argument here that questions at the end are the best part.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-giving-your-first-seminar/

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Beccy Owen is a PhD Researcher at the University of Warwick, exploring how tau pathology disrupts neuronal ion channels and brain network activity in Alzheimer’s disease. As part of the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Programme, her work uses electrophysiology to better understand the molecular drivers of neurodegeneration. Originally from the Welsh countryside, Beccy’s passion for dementia research was shaped during her postgraduate studies and through personal experience with a family member living with the condition. She will be sharing her journey, insights, and lessons learned throughout her PhD here on the blog.

Find Becky on LinkedIn

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

--

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Harriet Greene narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

Eighteen months into a PhD, everything clicks. The experiments run themselves, the walk to work has a coffee stop, and the days start blurring together. Harriet Greene knows exactly why that happens, and it worried her enough to do something about it.

In this blog she talks about swapping Oxford for the University of Salamanca for three weeks, working on glioblastoma through a FENS Early-Career Training Programme internship, reading a Spanish dictionary on repeat because nobody in the lab spoke English, and building the first research collaboration that was hers rather than her supervisor's. Recorded from Barcelona, with reflections on why comfort and progress are not the same thing.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-the-phd-comfort-zone/

Harriet Greene is a PhD student at the University of Oxford researching dementia prevention, focusing on how vascular risk factors such as hypertension affect the brain. Her project models the neurovascular unit in vitro, allowing her to explore biological mechanisms creatively and collaborate across departments and disease areas. Supported by the British Heart Foundation for research consumables, Harriet is also interested in biotech start-ups and translating lab discoveries into patient benefit. Outside academia, she is a scuba diving instructor, shell collector and lover of the sea, with a strong belief in paying kindness forward within the research community.

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers. Drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

--

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Dr Emma Law narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

Every two years, Emma has to sit her GCP update. Every two years she wonders whether it is actually necessary. This time she decided to find out properly, and the trail led back through the Nuremberg Code to the reason those rules exist at all. Along the way she picked up some things that had changed since her last refresher, including new terminology, a much wider definition of source data, and a list of the ways data gets compromised on a study without anyone meaning to. Whether you are a research nurse, a trial coordinator or an early career researcher wondering why the certificate keeps expiring, Emma has an answer for you.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-gcp-training-do-we-really-need-regular-refreshers/

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Dr Emma Law is a Strategic Manager for the Neuroprogressive and Dementia Network in Scotland. Emma has 13 years of experience as a Clinical Trials Network Manager and over 35 years of experience as a Nurse, many of which were spent in the delivery of Clinical Research Trials. Emma completed her PhD and is passionate about giving people living with dementia and their carers access to participate in research.

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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.

--

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Professor Frank Gunn-Moore narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.

Forty years of a research career, told through the three gambles that shaped it. Frank starts with an admission that surprises people: he is known for dementia research and holds no qualification in it. What he does have is a first year at Edinburgh covering biology, chemistry, physics and maths, a Cambridge PhD building roughly 200 plasmids from scratch with no kits, and a willingness to move fields when the opportunity looked better than the plan. Gamble one took him to Bristol to work on a neurotrophic factor receptor he knew nothing about, hired purely for his DNA skills. Gamble two was a move to Edinburgh so his wife could take her dream job, which produced the textbook findings that got him his own group at St Andrews. Gamble three arrived as an email from a physicist asking whether anyone fancied doing weird things with lasers, and turned into a twenty year run through photonics, optical gene delivery and commercial microscopes. The second half is what he would pass on: make room for the left field experiment even when the homogenising pull of AI makes it harder to justify, walk away from collaborators who open with what is in it for them, get involved in pooled national initiatives, and stop treating early career researchers as stepping stones on someone else's route up.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-an-academic-career-then-and-now/

Professor Frank Gunn-Moore is an academic and researcher in neurodegeneration and dementia research at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His group has advanced understanding of the early cellular and biochemical mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, including links between mitochondrial and synaptic dysfunction, and has pioneered new models including the identification of Alzheimer’s-like pathology in cetaceans. His research has also identified potential therapeutic targets, novel signalling pathways such as FRMD6/Willin in the Hippo pathway, and contributed to patented optical technologies developed with industry. He has published over 150 research papers across biology, chemistry and physics, reflecting the interdisciplinary breadth of his work.

Find Frank on LinkedIn

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