03 Dec 12. Prof Joanna Wardlaw

Professor Joanna Wardlaw discusses her research into small vessel disease (SVD), stroke & dementia.

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Transcript - Prof Joanna Wardlaw, 2012

“Hello, my name is Joanna Wardlaw, I am Professor of Applied Neuroimaging, at the University of Edinburgh.

I am interested in how blood vessels can affect the brain, and particularly in using modern medical imaging techniques to help us understand how those blood vessels are causing things like stroke, and small vessel disease, how that damage can build up over a long time, and how that can affect brain function.

Modern medical imaging techniques can tell us all about different things in the brain like the wiring in the brain, how fast you’re thinking, it can look at thinking patterns and it can tell us about different parts of the brain and how well they’re surviving or not surviving.

Imaging has been incredibly important in understanding and developing new treatments for stroke, and we’re hoping that we can now use it also to start developing new treatments for small vessel disease, and this is particularly important, because small vessel disease causes about 45% of all dementias that we see today.”