Dementia Researcher Blogs

Dr Becky Carlyle narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.Every good lab trains people who then leave it, and in this blog Becky writes about what that costs the person left behind.The first half is practical: why no one is truly irreplaceable, how record keeping and an electronic lab notebook keep critical knowledge out of a single person's head, and why an offboarding protocol has to start months before the last afternoon.The second half is about the part of the job nobody puts in the induction pack. By the time you are a PI you are the one who stays while everyone else rotates past, and in a funding climate where good people leave because the money ran out rather than because they wanted to, the loss arrives mixed up with guilt. Becky writes openly about her own recent departure, the meeting where she could not hold it together, and what pulled her out of it: a network of peers who are not going anywhere, treating mobility as something that genuinely serves the researcher, and measuring your own success by what your people go on to do once they are gone.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-when-a-postdoc-leaves-your-lab/--Dr Becky Carlyle is an Alzheimer's Research UK Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford, and has previously worked in the USA. Becky writes about her experiences of starting up a research lab and progressing into a more senior research role. Becky's research uses mass-spectrometry to quantify thousands of proteins in the brains and biofluids of people with dementia. Her lab is working on various projects, including work to compare brain tissue from people with dementia from Alzheimer’s Disease, to tissue from people who have similar levels of Alzheimer’s Disease pathology but no memory problems. Becky is also a mum, she runs, drinks herbal teas and reads lots of books.--Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.ukThis podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.--Leave us a Tiphttps://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/supportFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunityhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.socialDownload and Register with our Community App:https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher

Beccy Owne narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.Beccy, a PhD student at the University of Warwick studying how tau disrupts ion channels in Alzheimer's disease, is nearly halfway through her PhD and looks back at what it has taught her away from the bench. She explains why research runs on a much longer clock than undergraduate or master's projects, why not knowing the answer is the whole point, and how a flash talk given two weeks into her studies changed how she handles new challenges in and out of the lab. She also covers keeping work and home separate, learning by doing, teaching in the lab, and treating failed experiments as a normal part of science. A good listen for anyone in the early years of a PhD, or anyone wondering if they're on track.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-10-things-my-phd-has-taught-me-so-far/--Beccy Owen is a PhD Researcher at the University of Warwick, exploring how tau pathology disrupts neuronal ion channels and brain network activity in Alzheimer’s disease. As part of the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Programme, her work uses electrophysiology to better understand the molecular drivers of neurodegeneration. Originally from the Welsh countryside, Beccy’s passion for dementia research was shaped during her postgraduate studies and through personal experience with a family member living with the condition. She will be sharing her journey, insights, and lessons learned throughout her PhD here on the blog.Find Becky on LinkedIn--Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.ukThis podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.--Leave us a Tiphttps://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/supportFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunityhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.socialDownload and Register with our Community App:https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher

Jacqui Kerr narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.Jacqui manages a research network. Most days that means teams, partnerships and delivery pathways. Then she drove north to a memory café in a rural Scottish town, sat down with a cuppa, and found herself back in the job she trained for in 2000. She had come to talk about research opportunities. What she got instead was a roomful of people asking how to take part, what would be expected of them, and whether living miles from a study site would count them out. Nobody was put off. She writes about what that afternoon put back into the work.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-returning-to-my-roots-visiting-a-memory-cafe/Jacqueline Kerr is the Network Manager for the Neuroprogressive and Dementia Network in Scotland. With a background in research management and public engagement, she is dedicated to supporting clinical trials and improving access to research across the country. Jacqueline works closely with clinicians, researchers, and the public to raise awareness of dementia studies and encourage participation.Leave us a Tiphttps://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/supportFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunityhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.socialDownload and Register with our Community App:https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher

Rahul Sidhu narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.Rahul is a regular Dementia Researcher blogger, usually writing about life as a PhD student and his work on heart disease and dementia. This time he goes back further, to his grandad, who lived with vascular dementia through Rahul's teenage years and died in 2019. Rahul describes the man his grandad was before dementia, a doctor who survived Partition and rebuilt his life in England, then walks through how the disease changed him, the family's decision to move him into a nursing home, and the stigma around dementia that he says still exists in many South Asian communities including his own. Worth reading whenever the day-to-day of research starts to feel disconnected from why you started it.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-my-grandads-story-why-i-became-a-neuroscientist/--​Rahul Sidhu is a PhD student at The University of Sheffield, focusing on the effects of heart disease on dementia in preclinical models of Alzheimer's disease. His research aims to uncover how cardiovascular health influences neurodegenerative conditions, potentially leading to novel therapeutic strategies.​ Find Rahul on LinkedIn--Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.ukThis podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.--Leave us a Tiphttps://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/supportFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunityhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.socialDownload and Register with our Community App:https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher

Dr Yvonne Couch narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.Yvonne got pulled into an accidental group chat argument with colleagues about whether the brain's glymphatic system actually exists, and it escalated into a full blown journal club debate.In this blog she walks through the case for it: how the lymphatic system works everywhere else in the body, why the brain's tightly packed vasculature makes a proper lymphatic network hard to picture, and how a 2012 paper from Maiken Nedergaard's group tied two older observations together into the modern glymphatic hypothesis. She then sets out where the critics push back, from the discovery of cerebral amyloid angiopathy patterns that do not fit a directional flow, to modelling that questions whether arterial pulsation can move enough fluid, to the 2015 discovery of actual lymphatic vessels in the meninges. Worth reading if you have ever nodded along to "the brain flushes itself while you sleep" without knowing quite how contested that sentence is.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-brain-drain-the-controversy-around-glymphatics/--Dr Yvonne Couch is a Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. Yvonne studies the role of extracellular vesicles and their role in changing the function of the vasculature after stroke, aiming to discover why the prevalence of dementia after stroke is three times higher than the average. It is her passion for problem solving and love of science that drives her, in advancing our knowledge of disease. Yvonne writes about her work, academic life, and careers as she takes a new road into independent research.--Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.ukThis podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.--Leave us a Tiphttps://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/supportFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunityhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.socialDownload and Register with our Community App:https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher