Nicky Yeo, talks about her PhD project, which explores whether we can bring the health and wellbeing benefits of nature indoors to residents of care homes using virtual reality technology.
Technology
Our innovative use of technology aims to lead the way on how emerging developments can mean global change, from understanding more about how dementia develops, to prevention, better diagnosis, and supporting people with dementia.
Our world-first PROTECT platform has more than 25,000 people aged 50 or over signed up online, to discover what factors influence brain health. It enables high-quality and cost-effective clinical trials in areas including genomics, diet and lifestyle.
Our Complex Disease Epigenomics Group uses cutting-edge technologies to examine changes in gene activity in the brain in dementia. They can isolate specific cell-types from brain tissue to explore patterns of gene function in individual neurons associated with the pathological hallmarks of disease.
We are putting new technologies to novel use, including using imaging to detect plaques in the brain, embedding artificial intelligence technology into the NHS to improve dementia diagnosis, and using virtual reality to bring natural environments into care homes. Meanwhile, our Smartline project is bringing technology into people’s homes to help us live healthier, happier lives
Technology - primary investigators
| Name | Role | Keywords |
|---|---|---|
| Professor Clive Ballard | Professor of Age-Related Diseases | Dementia, dementia prevention, antipsychotic medications, non-pharmacological interventions, cognitive health, neuropsychiatric symptoms, dementia care, clinical trials |
| Dr Anne Corbett | Senior Lecturer in Dementia Research | Dementia, dementia reduction, drug discovery, clinical trials, care home research, clinical trial delivery, online research, translational research, patient and public involvement |
| Professor Lora Fleming | Director of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health and Chair of Oceans, Epidemiology and Human Health | Epidemiology, environment, human health |
| Dr Katie Lunnon | Associate Professor in Epigenetics | Genomics, epigenetics, gene function, animal models, brain, transcription, bioinformatics |
| Professor Jonathan Mill | Professor of Epigenetics | Genomics, epigenetics, gene function, animal models, brain, transcription, bioinformatics |
| Dr David Llewellyn | Senior Research Fellow | Epidemiology, artificial intelligence, dementia diagnosis |
| Professor Andrew Randall | Professor in Applied Neurophysiology |
Neurophysiology, electrophysiology, cellular imaging, Alzheimer’s Disease |
| Professor Nick Stone |
Head of Physics and Astronomy | Biomedical imaging, biosensing, spectroscopic imaging, diagnostics |
| Dr Tim Taylor |
Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Public Health Economics (E&R) | Environmental and public health economics |
| Dr Mathew White |
Senior Lecturer | Natural environments, human health, wellbeing |
| Professor Paul Winyard | Professor of Experimental Medicine | Analytical biochemistry, proteomics, oxidative and nitrative stress, inflammation, diagnostics and experimental therapeutic |
| Professor Frank Vollmer | Professor of Biophysics | Analytical single-molecule methods, protein misfolding, Dementia, health-care on a chip, optical biosensing, protein analysis |
| Dr Steffen Scholpp | Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology | Wnt signalling, synaptogenesis, gene function, animal models, high- and super resolution microscopy, Alzheimer’s Disease |
| Professor Chris Fox | Professor of Clinical Psychiatry | Dementia, dementia prevention, antipsychotic medications, non-pharmacological interventions, cognitive health, neuropsychiatric symptoms, dementia care, clinical trials, artificial intelligence, care home research |