Your 2023 Cognitive Tests Will Be Available Soon in your ISLAND Portal
Our last newsletter contained information about CANTAB and TAS Test - our cognitive tests for 2023 and why it is so important for you to complete these tests every year. Both tests will be available on your ISLAND Home portal within the next week. Please keep an eye on your emails for your invitation to log into the portal and complete them. Cognitive changes can be very subtle and develop over a long period of time. We hope the ISLAND research study will continue for a number of years years and that we will be able to see how people's performance may change in these tests over that period of time. If you are not yet involved in our research but would like to complete our cognitive tests, please log in and sign up as a research participant. Once you have signed up, you will be invited to do some surveys before you can access the cognitive tests in our software.
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Thank you to everyone in Hobart who came to give a blood sample
A big Thank You from everyone in the ISLAND team to all our Southern participants who donated their blood recently. Our blood contains measurable indicators of what’s happening in our bodies. The blood samples you have given to the ISLAND Project are a vital part of our dementia prevention research. They will help our researchers monitor changes that might affect the brain and hopefully will lead to new interventions to help prevent dementia or help people to live a better quality of life after a diagnosis. We hope that your generosity by being an active participant of ISLAND will result in better care and treatment for Tasmanians in the future. You might be interested in this article on how biomarkers (not just blood) can help diagnose dementia. We will contact participants in other areas of the state by email later this year about blood collection times across the North and North West. Please monitor your email inbox for details.
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This month, our next phase of ISLAND Resilience data collection begins. If you are a member of our ISLAND Resilience Initiative we will invite you to take part, after you have completed ISLAND cognitive testing. Along with a few brief surveys, we will be collecting hair to measure stress hormones. So if you have short hair, currently between 2-3cm long at the back of your head, and would like to donate a sample, please don’t have a haircut in the coming month! In the photo above, Jess, James, Graeme and Duncan (R-L) demonstrate some common hairstyles and whether they work for hair collection. Jess is a research fellow investigating dementia biomarkers, James is a PhD candidate investigating stress, resilience and dementia risk, Graeme is a staff scientist who processes our ISLAND blood samples, and Duncan is a senior lecturer/researcher who leads the ISLAND Resilience Initiative.
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Brain Health Scotland Online Course
Brain Health Scotland are offering a free online course on Preventing Dementia. The course runs over four weeks and covers the biology of brain diseases, risk factors, clinical research and brain health around the world. The course is open to anyone with an interest in brain health, no prior knowledge is required. You can access the course here.
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