Biomarkers and treatment of the Lewy body dementias: An update

About Professor Asrsland

Dag Aarsland is Professor and Head of Department of Old Age Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, and Consultant psychiatrist at the Mental Health for Older Adults, South London & Maudsley NHS Health Trust, where he leads the Parkinson Spectrum Memory Clinic.  His research has involved a wide variety of topics within psychiatry and neuropsychiatry of older adults, with a focus on dementia. A main focus has been on dementia and neuropsychiatric problems in people with Parkinson’s disease, and dementia with Lewy bodies.  He has been actively involved in the international Task Forces developing the diagnostic criteria for dementia and mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. A current topic of interest is to study the underlying mechanisms of the association between depression and cognitive impairment in the elderly, with the aim of identifying new treatment targets.  After becoming specialist in psychiatry, he completed his PhD and appointed associate Professor and later Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the University in Bergen, Norway. Later he became professor at the University of Oslo, before becoming appointed as Professor of Clinical dementia research at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. After working in Sweden for five years he moved to his current post in London.