Cognitive-decline project scientists win award

The prize is awarded once every two years in recognition of the best scientific research in Scotland, with the focus this year being on “the brain including both neurological and psychiatric disorders”. Professor Ian Deary and Dr John Starr of University of Edinburgh were commended for their seminal research into why the human mind declines during aging.

Their current project, funded by Help the Aged, is called The Disconnected Mind and is an opportunity to better understand and create prevention strategies for age-related cognitive decline, including conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.

The Edinburgh-based team are meeting with and analysing 1,000 people who originally participated in the 1947 Scottish Mental Survey – a survey that was rediscovered in 1997 – and is giving the scientific research community the missing data it needs to seriously study why some people experience cognitive decline while others retain their mental sharpness as they grow older. Now is an important time for the research because its participants are at a critical age (around 70) when emerging symptoms of mental frailty can be most usefully examined.

There are 800,000 people currently diagnosed with severe cognitive decline in the UK and 18 million worldwide. This is projected to double in the next 20 years, causing massive hardship to both sufferers and their families, and huge economic cost to society.

Professor Lawrence Whalley of the University of Aberdeen also won the Tenovus (Scotland) Margaret MacLellan Award alongside Professor Deary and Dr Starr and is a collaborator on The Disconnected Mind.

The team of experts working with Professor Ian Deary and Dr John Starr on The Disconnected Mind are professor Jim McCulloch, Professor Joanna Wardlaw, Professor Richard Morris and Dr Karen Horsburgh, all at the University of Edinburgh.