Dementia Researcher Vodcast

This episode of the Dementia Researcher Podcast comes from the final day of the 36th Alzheimer Europe Conference in Dublin, looking back over three days of research, policy and lived experience.
Hosted by Dr Felicity Slocombe from the University of Bradford, the episode features Professor Andy Northcott from the Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory at the University of West London, Dr Gianna Kohl from UCL and Dr Tiffeny James from the University of Greenwich.
The conversation starts before the conference itself, with an Interdem keynote on ethics in care. It challenged the idea of “therapeutic lying”, and the debate carried on over dinner. From there, the panel talks about psychosocial research taking the plenary stage and what blood biomarkers look like to two qualitative researchers who went along to learn. They also cover specialist seating that eases pain and agitation, and whether having “Alzheimer” in the name of most national dementia organisations helps or hinders people with other forms of dementia. How dementia language travels across cultures comes up too, as does whether the conference venue itself is dementia friendly.
In this episode:
Is lying ever therapeutic?
Psychosocial research on the plenary stage
Blood biomarkers for the rest of us
Why seating matters in dementia care
Does “Alzheimer” in a name help or hinder?
Living alone, or caring from a distance
Emergency care when the paramedic has to leave
Lived experience moves from add-on to everyday

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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:
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Download and Register with our Community App:
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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

This episode of the Dementia Researcher Podcast comes from the 36th Alzheimer Europe Conference in Dublin. Researchers, policymakers and people with lived experience met there under the theme “Sláinte: Building momentum in dementia through policy, research and partnership”.
Hosted by Dr Jodi Watt from the University of Glasgow, the episode features Dr Rasa Mikelytė from the University of Kent, Dr Julieta Camino from the University of East Anglia and Dr Catherine Quinn from the University of Bradford. It was recorded at the end of the second day.
There was far more going on than any one person could see, so the panel take turns sharing the sessions, posters and conversations that made them think. Many of their picks are about everyday parts of life with dementia that research can overlook, from the chairs people sit in all day to how farmers access services. Rights and identity come up throughout. People living with dementia spoke about the right to stay at home. There was discussion of the language we use about dementia. And LGBTQIA+ sessions made non-binary and trans experiences part of the conversation. Young onset dementia had more attention than the panel has seen before, and they reflect on the “A Day in My Life” plenary and what it showed about working carers.
In this episode:
Why being seen, heard and valued still needs saying
How the right chair can change life in advanced dementia
Who decides the language we use about dementia
Making sure co-creation is more than a label
Rights, from staying at home to deprivation of liberty
Young onset dementia moves up the agenda
LGBTQIA+ lives and the strength of belonging
Where lived experience fits at Alzheimer Europe

--
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:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

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 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:
Why heart disease is the leading killer of women, and what that means for the brain
The heart attack symptoms women are most likely to miss
What vascular dementia really is, and why it rarely travels alone
Why blood pressure in your 40s may matter more for women
The female-specific risk factors missing from risk calculators
What pregnancy complications can tell us decades later
Hot flushes, HRT and the Women’s Health Initiative, revisited
GLP-1s, menopause and the belly fat question

--
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:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

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:
How good collaborations begin, often with an email, a conference talk or someone admitting they need help
Who should be on a grant application, and how large networks decide who stays involved
What to do when the people you approach are planning to lead the same bid
How specialist labs and shared platforms tell genuine collaboration from a request for a service
Who should write a multi-institution grant, and how to share leadership without duplicating every decision
When to discuss authorship, and why it needs revisiting as contributions change
How to handle collaborators who miss deadlines, go silent or will not approve a final draft
Why agreed standards of behaviour protect early career researchers in collaborative and PPI meetings

Essential links / resources mentioned in the show:
Team EMERALD
Dementia Frontiers Fund
The 100-plus Study
UK DRI Biomarker Factory
SPIN-D Network+
INTERDEM
Alzheimer's Society Doctoral Training Centre for Integrated Care
UK DRI Biomarker Factory

--
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:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

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:
What two hundred years of UCL has actually contributed to dementia research, told through three very different kinds of work rather than a roll call.
Why each of the guests has stayed, and what their research would have lost elsewhere, from Queen Square Brain Bank and three thousand characterised brains to the Hawkes Institute sitting alongside the Dementia Research Centre.
How the full pipeline in one institution changes the questions people ask, with cells, tissue and clinic from the same individual, and neurologists now bringing cases to the lab rather than the other way round.
Where UCL has changed the field, including letter number 23 and the Jennings family, Sea Hero Quest, the Lancet Commission risk factors, TREM2, the tau gene silencing trial, Insight 46 and the UK DRI.
Diagnosis as the theme of World Alzheimer's Day, and what still stands in the way, from co-pathologies that no blood test can yet see to deciding who is suited to the new treatments.
What none of this can do inside one building, and why rare dementias, genetic risk and a therapy app all depend on people well beyond UCL.
Why disease modification and support for people living with dementia today are answering different questions, and the case for funding both.
What the guests want to look strange by UCL's 220th birthday, and what they are asking listeners to do now.

--
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:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

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