Irene Heger - Lifestyle-boosted resilience towards brain damage and cognitive impairment.

 

Biography:
Irene has a background in medical psychology and lifestyle psychology. In 2021, she completed her PhD on primary prevention of dementia at the Alzheimer Centre Limburg. She defended her thesis a week prior to the Research Day. During her PhD, she conducted epidemiological studies on the relationship between lifestyle and dementia risk and translated this scientific evidence to the general public by conducting several public health initiatives. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Alzheimer Centre Limburg and aims to continue working on epidemiological and public health projects involving prevention of dementia.

 

Abstract:
Health and lifestyle factors account for a substantial proportion of all dementia cases worldwide, which opens the opportunity of primary prevention of dementia. The dementia risk score LIBRA includes twelve modifiable risk and protective factors and aims to identify at-risk individuals who will benefit most from lifestyle interventions and cardiovascular risk management. During this presentation, different projects that were part of a PhD thesis on primary prevention of dementia will be described. First, the already well-established relationship between LIBRA and cognitive performance will be explored in more depth, by looking into plausible biological pathways using brain MRI, and by investigating whether socioeconomic differences influence the relationship between LIBRA and cognitive decline. Next, we will describe projects aimed at translating the scientific evidence of primary prevention of dementia to the general public. We assessed the level of awareness of dementia risk reduction in the general population and evaluated two public health initiatives aimed at raising awareness of dementia risk reduction: a public health campaign and the MijnBreincoach mobile app.