Dementia is not an inevitable part of ageing and research shows there are effective ways to reduce the risks.

Dementia describes a set of symptoms which negatively impacts a person’s ability to live independently and often worsen with time. Symptoms can include problems remembering, thinking, speaking, and even changes in a person’s mood or personality.

These behavioural changes are caused by damage to brain cells and their connections. There are several different diseases that cause dementia including Alzheimer's disease.

The Alzheimer’s Research UK quick guide to dementia carries information on the different types of dementia and what we know about each of them.

There are many researchers across the UK doing ground-breaking research on dementia. Alzheimer’s Research UK funds many projects which seek to understand the different causes of dementia and the processes underlying them, including what puts people at risk, how to better diagnose, and how we might prevent or treat dementia.

Our research at the University of Sussex takes a lifespan approach to understand what happens in the years before dementia. We see changes in the brains of people at genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease, even from young adulthood. But genes are not the full story, and we are interested in how other factors interact with genetics. We’re particularly interested in factors we can modify earlier in life, to reduce the risk and hopefully prevent Alzheimer’s disease.