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In this episode of XXplored: Women's Brain Health, host Dr Laura Stankeviciute from the University of Gothenburg is joined by Dr Jenny Rabin from the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Research Institute, and Dr Louise Schindler from King's College London, to explain why the heart and the brain belong in the same conversation for women.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women worldwide, yet the picture most people hold of a heart attack is still an older man clutching his chest. The same blind spot carries over to the brain. Most of the dementia risk factors named by the 2024 Lancet Commission, from high blood pressure and LDL cholesterol to diabetes and smoking, are cardiovascular ones, and a growing body of evidence suggests several of them weigh more heavily on women than on men.
Jenny Rabin, a neuropsychologist whose work began with vascular contributions to Alzheimer's disease, and Louise Schindler, whose PhD linked cardiometabolic health across the menopause years to later brain changes, follow that thread through a woman's life.
In this episode:
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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
Academic collaborations shape most research careers, yet few researchers are ever taught how to start one, who to trust, or what needs agreeing before the work begins.
Adam Smith is joined by Dr Sarah Marzi, Reader in Neurogenomics at the UK Dementia Research Institute at King's College London, and Professor Georgina Charlesworth, Professor of Clinical Psychology of Ageing and Dementia at UCL and joint lead of the SPIN-D Network+. Also joining are Professor Nathan Davies, Professor of Ageing and Applied Health and Care Research at Queen Mary University of London and co-director of the Alzheimer's Society Doctoral Training Centre for Integrated Dementia Care, and Dr Amanda Heslegrave, Principal Research Fellow at the UK DRI at UCL and co-lead of the UK DRI Biomarker Factory. Between them they run an international research partnership, a national network with around 35 named co-applicants, a doctoral training centre across five universities, and a shared biomarker platform working with research teams across many projects.
The conversation follows a collaboration from first contact to final paper. It starts with how partnerships begin, often from a conference conversation or an email about data, and who should be on the application. It moves on to how to tell genuine collaboration from a request for a service, and how leadership, writing and credit are divided once the work is funded. The guests also talk about what happens when things go wrong, from partners who stop replying before a deadline to difficult meetings that leave early career researchers unsupported.
Their experience points to the same conclusion. Collaborations work best when leadership, contribution, behaviour and authorship are discussed early and revisited as the work changes.
In this episode:
Essential links / resources mentioned in the show:
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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
In this special episode, recorded to mark UCL's 200th birthday and released on World Alzheimer's Day, three UCL researchers working at very different ends of dementia research come together to talk about what the university has contributed, and where the field goes next.
Professor Selina Wray hosts, joined by Dr Aygun Badalova, a neuropsychologist working on digital neurorehabilitation at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Professor Tammaryn Lashley, Professor of Neuroscience and past president of the British Neuropathological Society, and Professor Andre Altmann, Professor of Biomedical Data Science and AI, who leads the COMBINE Lab.
Their three approaches could hardly be further apart. Aygun works with people living with dementia and a therapy app built around photographs of the people who matter to them. Tammaryn works with donated post-mortem brain tissue and the pathology that no scan can yet see. Andre works with datasets large enough to assemble a disease timeline nobody has lived long enough to observe directly. The conversation moves between all three, taking in why no two brains with the same diagnosis look the same, what blood-based biomarkers can and cannot tell us yet, where non-drug interventions sit alongside the new anti-amyloid treatments, and what it actually takes to hold that breadth of work inside a single institution.
This year's World Alzheimer's Month campaign is built around the idea that the earlier you know, the more you can do, and diagnosis runs through much of the discussion. Along the way there are some UCL landmarks worth knowing about, including the 23rd letter in a pile of replies to an Alzheimer's Society newsletter appeal and what it set in motion, Sea Hero Quest, the Lancet Commission's modifiable risk factors, the tau gene silencing trial, Insight 46, and the UK DRI. The episode closes on what each guest hopes we will find strange about dementia research by the time UCL turns 220.
In this episode:
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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
Sleep, the menstrual cycle and women's brain health rarely line up the way people expect. Women report worse sleep than men, yet objective recordings often show them sleeping longer and spending more time in deep sleep, and nobody has fully explained the gap.
Host Dr Laura Stankeviciute, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg working on sleep and sex differences in brain ageing, is joined by Professor Christian Benedict, Professor of Pharmacology at Uppsala University and scientific spokesperson for the Swedish Sleep Research Society, and Dr Alana Brown, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, whose research looks at how ovarian hormone loss changes sleep and memory.
The conversation moves from sleep architecture through the four phases of the menstrual cycle, into why insomnia is three times more common in women from puberty onwards and why obstructive sleep apnea is so often missed when the textbook symptoms were written from male patients. There is a straight assessment of melatonin, magnesium and creatine along the way, and a case for treating sleep as part of the treatment rather than a symptom that will sort itself out.
Key takeaways
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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
Should you pursue a fellowship or apply for a lectureship? The choice is often framed as protected research time versus a permanent contract, but the reality is more complicated.
Dr Fiona McLean hosts Dr Warren Donnellan from University of Liverpool, Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali from Teesside University, and Dr Sarah-Naomi James from University College London, to compare the jobs as they are actually experienced. They discuss teaching, hidden administration, research independence, institutional support, pay, promotion and what happens when funding ends. They also ask whether any academic role can now be considered secure, and share the questions candidates should ask before accepting a post.
Their routes show that fellowships and lectureships are not separate tracks: teaching can strengthen a fellow's next move, lecturers can still win fellowships, and careers rarely follow the tidy sequence shown on a CV.
In this episode:
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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
Changing the course of dementia depends entirely on where you are standing, and this panel is standing in four different places.
Recorded in front of a live audience at the Alzheimer's Research UK Thames Valley Network Dementia Research Day 2026, Professor Emma Mead, Chief Scientific Officer at the ARUK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute, puts the question to four people who see the problem from very different ends: Associate Professor Sanjay Manohar, computational neuroscientist and lead of the Cognitive Disorders Clinic at the John Radcliffe; Professor Michele Hu, consultant neurologist at Oxford, who runs the 1,600 person Oxford Discovery Parkinson's cohort; Associate Professor Laura Winchester, bioinformatician in Oxford's Department of Psychiatry; and Peter Johnson, head of service at Dementia Oxfordshire. They cover precision diagnosis, adaptive trial design, blood biomarkers, exercise and diet, digital monitoring at home, and what patients say frightens them most, plus audience questions on genetic testing and the biomarker gap. It closes with a quick fire round where four specialists name four different priorities, and not one of them is a drug.
Key takeaways
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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
Around 80% of women worldwide will become mothers, and pregnancy triggers the largest hormonal shift the body will ever experience. So what does it do to the brain, and does any of it last?
In this episode of XXplored, host Dr Laura Stankeviciute, University of Gothenburg is joined by Dr Magdalena Martínez-García, Scientific Director of Maternal Health at the Ann S. Bowers Women's Brain Health Initiative, University of California Santa Barbara, and Dr Laura Pritschet, an NIH funded postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who leads the Maternal Brain Mapping Project.
They get into the hormonal cascade that drives the whole process, what those widely reported grey matter reductions actually mean, and how one volunteer scanned 26 times from IVF to two years postpartum filled in the gap between before and after. They also take on baby brain, whether repeat pregnancies stack up in the brain, what the UK Biobank data hints at for later life dementia risk, the near total absence of miscarriage and stillbirth from this research, and where postpartum care falls short. Both guests are living through matrescence themselves while studying it, and they talk openly about what that has been like.
Key takeaways
--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
In this episode, we share highlights from the fourth day of the 2026 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC).
Adam Smith chats with Dr Niying Li, Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia; Dr Natasha Anita, a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital; and Lillian Morgado, Research Coordinator at Georgia State University.
The AAIC brings together researchers from all areas of research to share their work, theories and breakthroughs while exploring opportunities to accelerate work and elevate careers.
Key topics
Find out more about the conference at https://aaic.alz.org/ and on social media with #AAIC26
--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
In this episode, we share highlights from the third day of the 2026 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC).
Adam Smith chats with Cari Randa-Beaulieu, Provincial Coordinator, Knowledge Mobilization at the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia and Yukon; and Abrar AbuHamdia, a PhD candidate at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.
The AAIC brings together researchers from all areas of research to share their work, theories and breakthroughs while exploring opportunities to accelerate work and elevate careers.
Key topics
Find out more about the conference at https://aaic.alz.org/ and on social media with #AAIC26
Note: We apologise for issues with the sound quality in the first part of this recording.--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
In this episode, we share highlights from the second day of the 2026 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC).
Adam Smith chats with Nathania from Universitas Airlangga in Indonesia, Dr Arezoo Talebzadeh from Ghent University in Belgium, and Dr Suelyn Koerich from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
The AAIC brings together researchers from all areas of research to share their work, theories and breakthroughs while exploring opportunities to accelerate work and elevate careers.
Key topics
Find out more about the conference at https://aaic.alz.org/ and on social media with #AAIC26
--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs
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