Summary

Dr Vesna Vuksanovic and her research team are creating a neuroimaging model that they are going to use to understand the difference between healthy brain ageing and ageing in people with dementia. 

What do we already know?  

It’s no surprise that as we get older, our brain begins to age. What we don’t fully understand is what brain ageing is normal and what could be associated with a risk of dementia.  

There have already been neuroimaging models created for neurodegenerative diseases, but we still need better healthy brain ageing models to identify more reliably early changes in the brain associated with dementia. 

What is the project trying to find out?  

Dr Vesna Vuksanovic and her team will create a neuroimaging model of a healthy ageing brain and then use it to find differences between this and the brains of people with dementia. They will use information from brain scans in healthy ageing population from UK Biobank and in people with dementia. They will identify the brain changes shared between people who age without developing dementia and compare them to those who do.   

Why is this important?  

The findings from this study will improve our understanding of the brain, both in healthy ageing and in dementia. This opens the door to new research delving deeper into the findings which could lead to new treatment options. This pilot study also has the potential do identify biomarkers for those at high risk of developing dementia.