Australian Rotary Health

Nicole Kochan is currently working as a Research Fellow on a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funded Program Grant investigating ‘Neurocognitive Disorders of the Elderly’ in the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales. She is part of a large team of researchers investigating factors involved in healthy ageing and in the development of dementia in older adults.

Nicole’s research interests in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body dementia have developed from many years of clinical work as a Clinical Neuropsychologist specialising in dementia assessment and diagnosis. Her current research is focused on the development of sensitive clinical and computerised tests which can detect changes in memory and other cognitive (thinking) skills that may be early indicators of a dementing process. She will be expanding her skills by employing functional neuro-imaging technology which produces pictures that represent the activity occurring in the brain. This helps detect particular brain regions and networks that are not working normally at the earliest stages of dementia.

Nicole has a Bachelor of Psychology with Honours and a Master of Clinical Neuropsychology. She is currently enrolled in a PhD. Her career in Psychology has incorporated a diverse range of clinical work and research, spanning areas such as HIV risk reduction among injecting drug users, counselling at the University Psychology Clinic, cognitive functioning in Parkinson’s disease and cognitive rehabilitation of persons with traumatic brain injury. Over the past 6 years, she has been involved in the clinical and research programs at the Neuropsychiatric Institute Prince of Wales Hospital, a centre of excellence integrating expertise from various branches of neuroscience, in the diagnosis, management and study of neuropsychiatric disorders.

SUMMARY OF PROJECT:

Functional MRI investigation of the neural processes underlying Mild Cognitive Impairment

Dementia in the elderly is a major public health concern. The number of people with dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease in particular, will continue to rise due to longer life expectancy and significant ageing of the population. However, older people with mild cognitive disorders far exceed those with dementia. This group has an increased risk of developing dementia, yet our understanding of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is still in its infancy. Memory and attention are the most common cognitive functions affected in the early stages of dementia, particularly in Alzheimer's disease, and deficits are also evident in individuals with MCI.

Nicole Kochan, from the University of NSW, has received another Australian Rotary Health grant to continue her research using functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI); a powerful tool to observe brain activation changes in people with MCI.

This may provide information on the changing patterns of brain function that occur early in the disease process but before changes in brain structure can be seen with conventional imaging techniques.

This study will compare the brain activations on fMRI of a group of older adults with MCI to a group of healthy older adults. The aim is to understand the brain processes at the earliest stages of dementia and identify patterns for early detection of abnormality.