Research Contributions

Collaborations

Part of my research effort is directed toward the Cambridge Brain Bank Laboratory, which includes a brain bank facility that underpins major grant-supported clinical and fundamental neuroscience research in Cambridge. I was Director of the Cambridge Brain Bank from 1991 till 2002 and was involved in major MRC-funded collaborations, which included:

1. An epidemiological study of dementia in the Cambridge City over-75 Cohort (formerly Cambridge Project for Later Life) with Professors Paykel, Brayne and Huppert, among others
2. The Multicentre Cognitive Function in Ageing study with Professors Paykel, Brayne, Huppert, Esiri and Ince, among others
3. A study of Frontotemporal Dementia and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, with Professors Hodges and Patterson and Drs Bak, Spillantini and Davies, among others
4. A study which explores the relationship between Down’s syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease with Professor Holland.

Contributions

Through various collaborations, I have contributed to:

1. The identification of the prevalence and incidence of dementia in the elderly population in Cambridge, with particular reference to Alzheimer’s disease and vascular disease
2. The discovery that, in Alzheimer’s disease, compensatory changes in synaptic proteins precede tau pathology and the onset of clinical dementia
3. The identification and characterization of cases of Alzheimer’s disease with atypical neuropsychological deficits
4. The characterization of alternative clinical phenotypes in Alzheimer’s disease
5. The identification of several genetic polymorphisms and a deletion mutation related to Alzheimer’s disease
6. The discovery that tau gene mutation K257T can cause Pick’s disease
7. An understanding of the relationship between IT15 CAG triplet repeat expansion and the clinical and neuropathological phenotypes in Huntington’s disease
8. A description of the genomic organization of the human metabotropic glutamate receptor subtypes 3 and 5
9. A description of up-regulation of astrocytic metabotropic glutamate receptors in an in vitro model of neurodegeneration
10. An understanding of the neuropathological basis of fluent and non-fluent aphasia
11. The discovery that the perirhinal cortex is the anatomical basis of semantic memory in the human.