Welcome to this edition of the ISLAND Project newsletter. We are Duncan Sinclair (left), researcher and lecturer at the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, and James Brady (right), PhD candidate also at the Wicking Dementia Centre. We are members of the ISLAND Project research team, with a particular interest in how to minimise life stress so that it doesn’t cause problems for our brain health as we get older. Let’s start with me (Duncan)- I’m a neurobiologist who has been investigating how stress hormones impact our brains across the lifespan. I firmly believe that stressful experiences make us vulnerable to dementia, so we need to build our resilience. My research involves a) working with ISLAND Project participants to understand how (and why) stressful experience impact brain health, and b) using innovative human cell models to understand the mechanisms by which stress hormones impact dementia-related processes in the brain. When I’m not at the lab bench or working with the ISLAND Project, I’m often out on the mountain bike trails or tinkering in the shed. I love to make old things new again, and recently built a BBQ which incorporates parts from our old Hills Hoist! My family and I have made our home amongst the trees and wildlife on the foothills of kunanyi (Mt Wellington) since moving to Hobart four years ago. As for me (James), I’m a keen trail runner who’s recently been braving the cold to learn to surf. As a former newspaper journalist, I was exposed to a broad range of traumatic events and witnessed human suffering. Speaking with first responders and impacted families showed me that there were many factors which underpin mental health and wellbeing. An interest in this area led me to pursue a degree in psychological and behavioural neuroscience at the University of Tasmania. I have since studied attention-based brainwaves in response to neurofeedback mindfulness meditation and continue to broaden my understanding of cognitive and biological processes through The ISLAND Project and our upcoming Resilience Initiative. We are working together on a new ISLAND Project sub-study which will be launching soon. You may have read about it in our last newsletter- it is called the ISLAND Resilience Initiative. This initiative will investigate how ISLAND participants experience stress in their lives and offer a short course called ‘Bushfires and Your Health’ for increasing bushfire preparedness and building resilience. Stay tuned for more details and the official launch of the initiative in the coming weeks.
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