XXplored - Why Sex Matters & What we've Ignored in Brain Ageing

In this episode of XXplored: Women's Brain Health, host Dr Laura Stankeviciute from the University of Gothenburg is joined by Dr Jenny Rabin from the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Research Institute, and Dr Louise Schindler from King's College London, to explain why the heart and the brain belong in the same conversation for women. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women worldwide, yet the picture most people hold of a heart attack is still an older man clutching his chest. The same blind spot carries over to the brain. Most of the dementia risk factors named by the 2024 Lancet Commission, from high blood pressure and LDL cholesterol to diabetes and smoking, are cardiovascular ones, and a growing body of evidence suggests several of them weigh more heavily on women than on men. Jenny Rabin, a neuropsychologist whose work began with vascular contributions to Alzheimer's disease, and Louise Schindler, whose PhD linked cardiometabolic health across the menopause years to later brain changes, follow that thread through a woman's life. In this episode: Why heart disease is the leading killer of women, and what that means for the brain The heart attack symptoms women are most likely to miss What vascular dementia really is, and why it rarely travels alone Why blood pressure in your 40s may matter more for women The female-specific risk factors missing from risk calculators What pregnancy complications can tell us decades later Hot flushes, HRT and the Women’s Health Initiative, revisited GLP-1s, menopause and the belly fat question

Academic collaborations shape most research careers, yet few researchers are ever taught how to start one, who to trust, or what needs agreeing before the work begins. Adam Smith is joined by Dr Sarah Marzi, Reader in Neurogenomics at the UK Dementia Research Institute at King's College London, and Professor Georgina Charlesworth, Professor of Clinical Psychology of Ageing and Dementia at UCL and joint lead of the SPIN-D Network+. Also joining are Professor Nathan Davies, Professor of Ageing and Applied Health and Care Research at Queen Mary University of London and co-director of the Alzheimer's Society Doctoral Training Centre for Integrated Dementia Care, and Dr Amanda Heslegrave, Principal Research Fellow at the UK DRI at UCL and co-lead of the UK DRI Biomarker Factory. Between them they run an international research partnership, a national network with around 35 named co-applicants, a doctoral training centre across five universities, and a shared biomarker platform working with research teams across many projects. The conversation follows a collaboration from first contact to final paper. It starts with how partnerships begin, often from a conference conversation or an email about data, and who should be on the application. It moves on to how to tell genuine collaboration from a request for a service, and how leadership, writing and credit are divided once the work is funded. The guests also talk about what happens when things go wrong, from partners who stop replying before a deadline to difficult meetings that leave early career researchers unsupported. Their experience points to the same conclusion. Collaborations work best when leadership, contribution, behaviour and authorship are discussed early and revisited as the work changes. In this episode: How good collaborations begin, often with an email, a conference talk or someone admitting they need help Who should be on a grant application, and how large networks decide who stays involved What to do when the people you approach are planning to lead the same bid How specialist labs and shared platforms tell genuine collaboration from a request for a service Who should write a multi-institution grant, and how to share leadership without duplicating every decision When to discuss authorship, and why it needs revisiting as contributions change How to handle collaborators who miss deadlines, go silent or will not approve a final draft Why agreed standards of behaviour protect early career researchers in collaborative and PPI meetings

In this special episode, recorded to mark UCL's 200th birthday and released on World Alzheimer's Day, three UCL researchers working at very different ends of dementia research come together to talk about what the university has contributed, and where the field goes next. Professor Selina Wray hosts, joined by Dr Aygun Badalova, a neuropsychologist working on digital neurorehabilitation at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Professor Tammaryn Lashley, Professor of Neuroscience and past president of the British Neuropathological Society, and Professor Andre Altmann, Professor of Biomedical Data Science and AI, who leads the COMBINE Lab. Their three approaches could hardly be further apart. Aygun works with people living with dementia and a therapy app built around photographs of the people who matter to them. Tammaryn works with donated post-mortem brain tissue and the pathology that no scan can yet see. Andre works with datasets large enough to assemble a disease timeline nobody has lived long enough to observe directly. The conversation moves between all three, taking in why no two brains with the same diagnosis look the same, what blood-based biomarkers can and cannot tell us yet, where non-drug interventions sit alongside the new anti-amyloid treatments, and what it actually takes to hold that breadth of work inside a single institution. This year's World Alzheimer's Month campaign is built around the idea that the earlier you know, the more you can do, and diagnosis runs through much of the discussion. Along the way there are some UCL landmarks worth knowing about, including the 23rd letter in a pile of replies to an Alzheimer's Society newsletter appeal and what it set in motion, Sea Hero Quest, the Lancet Commission's modifiable risk factors, the tau gene silencing trial, Insight 46, and the UK DRI. The episode closes on what each guest hopes we will find strange about dementia research by the time UCL turns 220. In this episode: What two hundred years of UCL has actually contributed to dementia research, told through three very different kinds of work rather than a roll call. Why each of the guests has stayed, and what their research would have lost elsewhere, from Queen Square Brain Bank and three thousand characterised brains to the Hawkes Institute sitting alongside the Dementia Research Centre. How the full pipeline in one institution changes the questions people ask, with cells, tissue and clinic from the same individual, and neurologists now bringing cases to the lab rather than the other way round. Where UCL has changed the field, including letter number 23 and the Jennings family, Sea Hero Quest, the Lancet Commission risk factors, TREM2, the tau gene silencing trial, Insight 46 and the UK DRI. Diagnosis as the theme of World Alzheimer's Day, and what still stands in the way, from co-pathologies that no blood test can yet see to deciding who is suited to the new treatments. What none of this can do inside one building, and why rare dementias, genetic risk and a therapy app all depend on people well beyond UCL. Why disease modification and support for people living with dementia today are answering different questions, and the case for funding both. What the guests want to look strange by UCL's 220th birthday, and what they are asking listeners to do now.

Sleep, the menstrual cycle and women's brain health rarely line up the way people expect. Women report worse sleep than men, yet objective recordings often show them sleeping longer and spending more time in deep sleep, and nobody has fully explained the gap. Host Dr Laura Stankeviciute, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg working on sleep and sex differences in brain ageing, is joined by Professor Christian Benedict, Professor of Pharmacology at Uppsala University and scientific spokesperson for the Swedish Sleep Research Society, and Dr Alana Brown, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, whose research looks at how ovarian hormone loss changes sleep and memory. The conversation moves from sleep architecture through the four phases of the menstrual cycle, into why insomnia is three times more common in women from puberty onwards and why obstructive sleep apnea is so often missed when the textbook symptoms were written from male patients. There is a straight assessment of melatonin, magnesium and creatine along the way, and a case for treating sleep as part of the treatment rather than a symptom that will sort itself out. Key takeaways The subjective and objective sleep paradox sits at the centre of the episode: women report worse sleep, but recordings often show longer total sleep time and more deep slow wave sleep than age-matched men. Longer REM sleep latency in older women is raised as a possible early marker of brain vulnerability, with links to amyloid-beta and phosphorylated tau build-up. Sleep does shift across the menstrual cycle, with the luteal phase most consistently linked to poorer sleep, but the guests push back on how certain social media makes this look. HRT can ease vasomotor symptoms without fixing sleep, because years of failed nights build a psychological pattern that needs unlearning through CBT for insomnia. Obstructive sleep apnea in women often presents without the loud snoring and witnessed apneas of the male picture, and prevalence climbs after menopause until the sex gap narrows. The episode argues sleep is a physiological need rather than a lifestyle factor, and belongs inside the intervention rather than being left to improve on its own.

Should you pursue a fellowship or apply for a lectureship? The choice is often framed as protected research time versus a permanent contract, but the reality is more complicated. Dr Fiona McLean hosts Dr Warren Donnellan from University of Liverpool, Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali from Teesside University, and Dr Sarah-Naomi James from University College London, to compare the jobs as they are actually experienced. They discuss teaching, hidden administration, research independence, institutional support, pay, promotion and what happens when funding ends. They also ask whether any academic role can now be considered secure, and share the questions candidates should ask before accepting a post. Their routes show that fellowships and lectureships are not separate tracks: teaching can strengthen a fellow's next move, lecturers can still win fellowships, and careers rarely follow the tidy sequence shown on a CV. In this episode: What teaching-and-research and teaching-and-scholarship lectureships involve day to day How fellowships create independence, and where institutional control still applies Why teaching, administration and student support often consume more time than workload figures suggest What happens when a fellowship ends, including tenure-track promises and the need for further funding How salary bands, spine points and contribution points affect pay Whether any academic role can now be considered secure The interview questions that reveal expectations and departmental culture Why teaching experience, mentorship and resilience can keep more than one career route open