Dementia | the NeuRA blog

Category Archives: Dementia

Understanding the challenging behaviours of dementia

08/11/2018 Ellice Mol Leave a comment

NeuRA’s Dr Moyra Mortby presented at Uniting War Memorial Hospital’s free seminar on Healthy Brains this week. Dr Mortby shared her research into the neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia. These are the challenging behaviours associated with dementia such as delusions, sleep disturbances, anxiety and agitation. “Neuropsychiatric symptoms are a diverse group of non-cognitive symptoms of dementia that are characterised by disturbed […]

Eating behaviours and FTD

13/02/2017 Rebekah Ahmed One comment

Understanding what causes the changes in eating behaviours in people with frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis could potentially improve disease prognoses and progression. Metabolic changes including fluctuations in weight, insulin resistance, and cholesterol levels have been identified in both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). I am exploring whether these metabolic changes are related and how they might […]

Beyond losing language: Empathy changes in dementia

13/12/2016 Jessica Hazelton One comment

You’re in a café looking at the cake display while you wait for your morning coffee. Suddenly you hear a thud, and realise a woman has dropped her chocolate mud cake that reads “Happy Birthday Dad” directly on the ground in front of her. From witnessing the woman’s reaction, you understand that she feels disappointed that she has dropped her […]

Dementia

Music as a Therapy – a perspective from the 60s

28/09/2016 Dennis Frost 8 comments

Dennis Frost was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia at age 59. In honour of Frontotemporal Awareness Week, he has shared with us some of the impacts the diagnosis has had on his life. Here, he shares how the music of his youth holds even greater relevance to him now and offers him a pathway to the past once again. It is well […]

Broken chains

26/09/2016 Dennis Frost One comment

Dennis Frost was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia at age 59. In honour of Frontotemporal Awareness Week, he has shared with us some of the impacts the diagnosis has had on his life. Here, he discusses the worry of forgetting family history and what he can pass on to the next generation. How do we live on beyond our own mortality? We […]

New issue of NeuRA Magazine out now

19/09/2016 Andrew Cartwright Leave a comment

The new issue of the NeuRA Magazine (#18) will arrive in people’s letterboxes this week, but if you haven’t yet signed up for it, or would prefer to read the digital version, you can go here. The issue explores in further detail the new study from Assoc Prof Olivier Piguet’s group, which has confirmed what many anecdotal stories had previously […]

Progesterone in MND and FTD

31/08/2016 John Kwok One comment

The role of progesterone, identified as a potential therapy for MND, is being investigated for FTD. Motor Neurone Disease (MND), also referred to as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in some countries, is just one of the clinical syndromes associated with frontotemporal dementia or FTD. Others include corticobasal syndrome and progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome with a clinical variant of FTD being […]

Motor Neurone Disease – Shelly’s story

29/08/2016 Andrew Eisenhauer Leave a comment

Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a devastating brain disease that quickly and progressively destroys the ability to move, speak, swallow and breathe. MND is also referred to as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in some countries. MND is incurable. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is two to three years. Jim Demirov was a strong man who enjoyed a successful drag-racing […]

Healthy centenarian study

19/08/2016 Jessica Lazarus One comment

National Science Week celebrates science diversity. Following a degree in Medical Science, PhD student Jessica Lazarus continues her research journey in NeuRA’s PhD program. Heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve DNA coding sequence modifications are referred to as ‘epigenetic’. DNA methylation was the first discovered epigenetic mark, and remains the most studied. I will be using DNA […]

Progressive research is offering new hope across all ages

15/08/2016 Peter Schofield Leave a comment

The most important investment in our country, from both a social and economic perspective, is in the well-being of its citizens through health and medical research. Tackling the growing impact of mental illness is imperative, and given our ageing population, the neurodegenerative conditions mean that over 350,000 Australians are living with dementia. This requires a sustained and comprehensive commitment from […]

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