Understanding Dementia: Exploring the Brain

Dr Maura Malpetti is a Senior Research Associate and Race Against Dementia Alzheimer’s Research UK Fellow in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge. She originally trained in Italy and after obtaining her PhD in Clinical Neurosciences in Cambridge, she further trained as a visiting researcher at the University of California San Francisco, and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research focuses on the application of brain scans and blood tests to measure early brain changes, like inflammation and the accumulation of junk proteins, that can forecast clinical outcomes in people with several types of dementia. Her work aims to identify clinically relevant biomarkers and targets for early detection, more accurate prognosis and effective treatments in people living with these conditions.

Memory, language, and attention are among the cognitive skills that people with dementia gradually lose. There are different types of dementia, but they have much in common in what happens in the brain. There is a build-up of harmful “junk proteins”, as well as chronic inflammation, and cell death that leads to brain shrinkage known as atrophy, and the manifestation of dementia symptoms. Blood tests and brain scanning methods have advanced quickly to provide a better understanding of these changes in the brain. These can now detect and measure the amount of junk proteins and the shrinkage of the brain in people with dementia. In this talk, we will discuss the recent advancements in brain scanning techniques for early detection of brain changes in people at risk of or with dementia, and their utility in supporting the development of new treatments

Marlou's research focuses on how and why people vary in their performance when executing the same action repeatedly.

Think about typing a message on your phone: you will not type each key with the exact same speed, but will sometimes be faster and sometimes slower. Occassionally you might make typos even when the word is easy to spell. Everyone is variable, but are some people more variable than others? Marlou will be talking how people differ, and how these differences can help in studying conditions like dementia.