• Question: What do you think is most important in your field of work to research?

    Asked by anon-188482 to Warren, Pizza Ka Yee, Paul, Nadine, Alex on 14 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Reid

      Alex Reid answered on 14 Nov 2018: last edited 14 Nov 2018 9:42 pm

      Hi 247mep39, thanks for the question. Each of use will have different answers to this, and mine will be from the perspective of a sleep psychologist. Sleep plays a huge role in your wellbeing on several levels (both your brain and body). From a psychological perspective it is essential for healthy brain, for emotional regulation, and for memory consolidation. Learning how sleep is involved in all these things can help people. To give a few examples, there is evidence that poor sleep may be part of a negative feedback loop with Alzheimer’s, so worse sleep might mean more deterioration in the condition, which in turn might lead to even worse sleep. Mental health in general also shares a close relationship with sleep, and disorders such as depression and post trumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are often accompanied by pretty severe sleep disturbances. By understanding the relationship between sleep and all these things, we may not only learn more about the underlying diseases/conditions, but also potential interventions to actively help people.

    • Photo: Nadine Mirza

      Nadine Mirza answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Since my area is dementia I would say first and foremost is the work being done by scientists to cure the various forms of dementia, like Alzheimer’s disease. A lot of time, money, effort and resources are being poured into figuring out how to investigate which are the problem genes that lead to dementia and to fix the mutations and errors within them. There’s also ongoing research on how to undo the brain damage done by dementia such as the regeneration of damaged brain cells and undo things like atrophy, which is the shrinking of parts of the brain.
      Figuring out how to solve these problems and then making that solution available and accessible to everyone across the globe would be the most vital thing right now I think!
      Given that we’re still on our way to finding these important discoveries, I think the most important thing that is actively being conducted in dementia research right now is finding out how to prevent it and promoting this information so that we incorporate it into our lifestyle.

Comments