Past Event

About the speaker

Klaus Ebmeier

University of Oxford Professor of Old Age Psychiatry. Graduated in Medicine from the University of Bonn (1981), trained in Psychiatry in Aberdeen and worked as Lecturer in Mental Health (Aberdeen), MRC Scientist and Chair of Psychiatry (Edinburgh) until 2006, and then Foundation Chair of Old Age Psychiatry (Oxford). Interested in imaging large samples of participants to isolate the effects of healthy and pathological brain ageing. Particular interest in brain mechanisms that protect against psychiatric illness, such as depression and dementia.

 

Abstract

We have teamed up with the Whitehall II Study at UCL and the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB) to examine 800 volunteers, who have been followed up 2-yearly for the last 30 years. Whitehall Imaging Oxford is participant in the EU Horizon 2020 Project Lifebrain. Our focus of interest is on the interaction of genetic, environmental, social, and psychological factors that confer risk and resilience on people as they age. Our imaging, cognitive and psychiatric research aims to investigate emerging evidence of the brain architecture that enables individuals to compensate cognitively and emotionally, particularly with advancing age.

I will give short introduction to Whitehall II Imaging and Lifebrain, report on preliminary results that link secondary stress markers in mid-life to brain structure and function around 70 years, and specifically describe predictors of resilience to age-related brain damage and the brain effects of moderate wine consumption.

 

 

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