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We all experience feeling more forgetful than we used to from time to time, but is this normal? Join us at 7pm at the City Cafe (in the basement function room) to explore what happens to our brains as we age. We will tackle what determines our cognitive abilities in later life and delve into understanding what occurs if “normal” ageing goes wrong – dementia. Pint of Science Edinburgh is supported by an Innovation Initiative Grant from the Edinburgh Fund at the University of Edinburgh.
The ageing brain: is dementia inevitable?
As we age, our hair turns grey, our skin wrinkles, our joints stiffen and for some, our brain function declines. In our ageing society, dementia rates are increasing, so does that mean dementia is an inevitable feature of ageing and if so, what is going wrong in our ageing brains? In this talk, Dr Chris Henstridge will introduce the different cells that make up our brain and the connections they form which allow us to think, love, remember and plan our daily lives. Finally, he will describe what happens to these cells as we age naturally and what goes wrong in brain disorders like dementia.
Smart ageing: can we avoid cognitive decline?
What happens to our intelligence as we age? Why do some people age better than others? Is there anything we can do to stave off the seemingly inevitable process of old-age mental decline? In this talk, Dr Stuart Ritchie will discuss results from our long-term study in Edinburgh, the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, digging into neuroimaging and genetic data to reveal some biological insights into our ageing mind.
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