Lumen Autumn 2025 - Flipbook - Page 13
the Council of the Ageing and one of the things that was mentioned
was the first judo trial. I’m happy to know these skills and I haven’t
had to use them, but I now find when I fall in class, I make choices
of how to do it. I would go into shock when I fell. I’m more aware
of my body now, of the strength and stability required.”
“BY TEACHING SAFER LANDINGS,
WE NOT ONLY WANT TO DECREASE
THE NUMBER OF FALLS, BUT ALSO
MINIMISE THE IMPACT AND HARM
FROM FALLING.”
For Alana, a titleholder with the School of Public Health
(PhD 2010), judo was a far cry from anything she’d ever done.
“At first I was hesitant, because I didn’t know anyone, but
everyone is so supportive,” she says. “We’ve developed a really
nice group, it’s also so good for memory, social skills and just how
to keep safe. It’s given us more confidence in everyday life.”
For Jean, judo is a reason to keep moving and learning. “We go to
two sessions a week now, and then on Thursdays we go to Pilates,”
she says. “My new goal is to get to my black belt.”
In the case of neurodegenerative disease in particular, given
that age is the biggest risk factor, and we have a rapidly ageing
population, cases are expected to skyrocket in coming years.
This makes it critical that we act now to identify and reduce risk.
The power of the brain
“We’re interested in how other lifestyle risk factors interact
with age to either increase or decrease risk,” Associate Professor
Collins-Praino explains.
Associate Professor Lyndsey Collins-Praino always thought she’d
be working with people with neurological disease. An interest in
understanding what happens in the brain, and a desire to improve
life for those living with neurological disease, propelled her into
behavioural and cognitive neuroscience.
“To do this, we combine comprehensive cognitive/motor
testing with analysis of biomarkers, neuroimaging measures and
lifestyle factors in order to try to predict specific outcomes using
machine learning.
Her research now focuses on the brain mechanisms underlying
cognitive decline in healthy ageing and in neurodegenerative
diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
“Ultimately, identifying people at high risk of cognitive decline
is the first step in developing novel strategies to treat or prevent
it. We’re working towards a more personalised approach to
cognitive health.”
“There’s just so much we don’t know about the brain,” she says.
“Now is a really exciting time in neurodegeneration research in
particular – we’ve got advances coming that 5, 10, 20 years ago
we couldn’t imagine. This includes new treatment avenues for
dementia and new techniques that may improve diagnosis of
Parkinson’s disease. I think we’ll look back on 2024 as a
landmark year.”
Rhiannon Koch is a Media Officer for the University of Adelaide.
Images by Isaac Freeman, photographic editor of Lumen, and the
Robinson Research Institute.
And she is in a position to know, as head of the University’s
Cognition, Ageing and Neurodegenerative Disease Laboratory
(CANDL).
“We have a bench-to-bedside approach to identifying novel
predictors of the risk/rate of cognitive decline both in ageing and in
neurological diseases. This means that our lab-based studies inform
our research with clinical populations and vice-versa,” she says.
“When people think of cognitive decline, they often think of
ageing, but it can occur at any point in life, particularly for
those living with certain types of neurological disease.
Our lab is interested in how cognitive function changes across the
lifespan, and how conditions like traumatic brain injury, stroke or
neurodegenerative disease impact this. We’re especially focused
on how we can predict who is at risk of cognitive decline.”
LUMEN
