Great progress has been made over the past decade in the development of blood based bio-markers to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. However, other areas have been quietly working away, and have also made significant progress.

In this podcast we explore two of the newest and most innovative technologies being applied to detect biomarkers for dementia – looking at the retina and brainwaves.

Dr Amanda Heslegrave, Senior Research Fellow at the UK Dementia Research Institute, University College London and one of the people behind the progress being made in blood-based biomarker field is out guest host.

This weeks guests are:

Dr Catherine Bornbaum, Head of Clinical Operations and Partnerships at Retispec. Catherine, uses innovative imaging technology combined with robust machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect biomarkers of neurodegenerative disease throughout the eye. The eye provides a simple and non-invasive way to measure the central nervous system; it is also the only organ where both neurons and blood vessels can be directly visualized at micron-level resolution.

Dr George Stothart, Senior Lecturer at University of Bath. George is a cognitive neuroscientist who translates the findings of cognitive neuroscience into useful tools for clinicians and the wider world. His primary research focus is the development of a new EEG technique, known as Fastball, for the assessment of cognitive deficits in dementia. Fastball EEG is a completely passive test which measures brain waves the patient looks at a series of images on a computer screen over two minutes – a completely new assessment technique.

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For more information visit:

https://www.retispec.com/

https://www.bath.ac.uk/projects/fastball-mci/

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Full biographies on all our guests and a transcript can be found on our website https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

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Like what you hear? Please review, like, and share our podcast - and don't forget to subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode – and if you prefer to watch rather than listen, you’ll find a video version of this podcast with full captions on our YouTube Channel – http://www.youtube.com/dementiaresearcher

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This podcast is brought to you by University College London / UCLH NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in association with Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia who we thank for their ongoing support.