Dementia Researcher Vodcast

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
The subjective and objective sleep paradox sits at the centre of the episode: women report worse sleep, but recordings often show longer total sleep time and more deep slow wave sleep than age-matched men.
Longer REM sleep latency in older women is raised as a possible early marker of brain vulnerability, with links to amyloid-beta and phosphorylated tau build-up.
Sleep does shift across the menstrual cycle, with the luteal phase most consistently linked to poorer sleep, but the guests push back on how certain social media makes this look.
HRT can ease vasomotor symptoms without fixing sleep, because years of failed nights build a psychological pattern that needs unlearning through CBT for insomnia.
Obstructive sleep apnea in women often presents without the loud snoring and witnessed apneas of the male picture, and prevalence climbs after menopause until the sex gap narrows.
The episode argues sleep is a physiological need rather than a lifestyle factor, and belongs inside the intervention rather than being left to improve on its own.

--
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

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:
What teaching-and-research and teaching-and-scholarship lectureships involve day to day
How fellowships create independence, and where institutional control still applies
Why teaching, administration and student support often consume more time than workload figures suggest
What happens when a fellowship ends, including tenure-track promises and the need for further funding
How salary bands, spine points and contribution points affect pay
Whether any academic role can now be considered secure
The interview questions that reveal expectations and departmental culture
Why teaching experience, mentorship and resilience can keep more than one career route open

--
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

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
Of roughly 500 patients seen with Alzheimer's, only about 10 have typical Alzheimer's and nothing else. Everyone else carries a different combination, and that fingerprint matters now that treatments target specific molecules.
Until this year, getting a biological diagnosis meant a lumbar puncture, so around 70% of patients never had one. Blood markers change who gets tested, and raise the harder question of what you tell people afterwards.
Multi-arm multi-stage designs, borrowed from prostate cancer, run several treatment arms against one placebo group and force go or no go calls at 6 to 12 months. ACT-PD is doing it for Parkinson's.
In the exenatide trial the placebo group improved over two years simply from being in a trial. Regular contact and something to aim at has a measurable effect you have to design around.
Once the survival figure and the monitoring burden are explained, most patients conclude the new Alzheimer's therapies are not yet for them. What they ask for is quality of life, not longer decline.
Asked what would make the biggest impact, the panel chose home digital monitoring, opening up trial data after studies close, AI as a support for thinking, and joined up hospital and community care. Not one of them named a drug.

--
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

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
Pregnancy brings hormone surges into the hundreds and thousandfold, far beyond anything seen across the menstrual cycle, and sensitivity to those shifts matters more than the absolute levels.
Grey matter reductions across pregnancy are among the most replicable findings in neuroscience, and larger reductions are linked to stronger postpartum bonding rather than damage.
Follow-up work found some of those changes still present six years after birth, suggesting they may be long-lasting or permanent.
A second pregnancy produces the same pattern of change but less pronounced, and UK Biobank data suggests a trace of parity in the brain that levels off around four or five births.
Baby brain gets reframed rather than dismissed: subjective reports are real, objective differences are slight and temporary, and increased cognitive load may carry later advantages.
Miscarriage, stillbirth and abortion are almost entirely missing from maternal brain research, and both guests believe those women would be among the most motivated participants.
Research now treats the perinatal period as a neurological transition, but healthcare has not caught up, with a single six week check standing in for what should be ongoing postpartum care.

--
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, 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
The practical barriers to delivering new anti-amyloid treatments
Rural and international inequalities in access to diagnosis and care
What p-tau217 could tell us about future cognitive decline
Promising results from new tau-targeting therapies
Behavioural and personality changes as possible early signs of neurodegeneration
Women’s brain health, inflammation and Alzheimer’s risk
The ethical and legal questions surrounding biomarker disclosure
Why research must include more countries and underrepresented populations

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:
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