Risk and Resilience Factors for Dementia Prevention | Public Lecture Dublin

On the occasion of the 2024 PREVENT General Assembly at Trinity College Dublin, we are pleased to invite you to a public lecture exploring dementia prevention. This talk will delve into the various risk factors contributing to the development of dementia, as well as the resilience factors that can help prevent it.

The lecture will be given by Ian Robertson, Founding Director of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Trinity. Ian is co-leader of the BrainHealth Project (Center for BrainHealth UTDallas) and is a Member of Academia Europaea and of the Royal Irish Academy. He is widely known for his research on neuropsychology and his science writing has included books aimed at the general reader: Mind Sculpture (2000), The Mind’s Eye (2003), Stay Sharp (2005), The Winner Effect (2012) and The Stress Test (2016), all of which have been widely translated. His most recent book How Confidence Works was published by Penguin in 2022.

About PREVENT

The PREVENT Dementia study seeks to identify the earliest signs of dementia, which may occur in the brain decades before symptoms appear. By predicting who is most at risk, the study aims to intervene early and prevent the disease from taking hold. With dementia cases expected to increase from 46.8 million in 2015 to 131.5 million by 2050, this research is critical. 

The early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease that this study will develop will serve as essential prerequisites to future, population-wide early intervention programs, both pharmaceutical and environmental. This large multi-center study, which brings together researchers from Trinity, led by GBHI faculty members Lorina Naci and Brian Lawlor, as well as Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh universities, Imperial College London, and INSERM Neuroscience in France, has the potential to enhance early detection, improve treatment, and ultimately prevent Alzheimer’s dementia.