Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Donor Impact

For CHeBA donor Francesca Wood it was a mixture of sadness and relief when her mother, Mrs Helen Reading, was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2017.  Helen and granddaughter Izzy According to Francesca, it took a long time for her Mum to be diagnosed.   “There was a lot of denial that anything was wrong despite most of us around her acknowledging that all the signs were pointing to dementia.” Francesca, who lives in Melbourne, said that the years between her diagnosis and her passing were extremely challenging. “It was a slow mourning period watching my beautiful mum disappear. “I… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au CHeBA’s Sydney Memory and Ageing Study is one of the largest continuously running studies of cognitive ageing in Australia with the aims of investigating rates and predictors of healthy cognitive ageing, mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older Australians. An extraordinary 1,037 older adults have generously committed their time to this research for 15 years. One of these incredible people was Mrs Lilian Keldoulis.  Lilian was born in Sydney in 1931, the second daughter to Greek immigrant parents Betty and Mick Adams. Shortly after she was born… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Dr Karolina Krysinska obtained her PhD in Psychology in 2001 and has since had a rich career history in research. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at The University of Melbourne and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity at the University of New South Wales. Previously she worked on the Australian Dementia Network (ADNeT) Registry project at the Monash University. Karolina is also a Gestalt psychotherapist at the ConnectGround Clinic and Lygon… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au “Brain age” is an emerging hot research topic in brain ageing research. Brain age refers to an estimate of “how old a person’s brain is biologically”, representing actual brain health status. For example, a person aged 80 years old may have a healthier brain and more intact brain structures relative to his/her age. In this case, a younger brain age of, for example, 70 will be assigned. By doing so, one can assess the brain’s health relative to chronological age. Research can also be conducted by examining the protective factors in the individuals with… Read More