Published Sep 11 2025

The hunt for dementia’s hidden clues

Velandai
Srikanth
Professor, Peninsula Clinical School, Director, National Centre for Healthy Ageing
Joanne ryan
Associate Professor (Research), Chronic Disease and Ageing, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine
Adeel razi
Associate Professor (Research), Psychology
Amy brodtmann
Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Victorian Heart Institute

About the Authors

  • Velandai srikanth

    Professor, Peninsula Clinical School, Director, National Centre for Healthy Ageing

    Velandai is an NHMRC Practitioner Fellow, and has been the recipient of continuous fellowships from the NHMRC and the Heart Foundation over the past 10 years. His program of research spans several aspects of ageing health. His primary interest is in the study of risk factors and mechanisms underlying dementia, particularly with respect to vascular and metabolic health. He has also led the field in the study of the impact of brain ageing on impaired mobility and the risk of falls, and in the link between brain ageing, gait and cognition. He actively collaborates in large scale initiatives in the genetics of brain ageing and risk stratification for the secondary prevention of stroke.

  • Joanne ryan

    Associate Professor (Research), Chronic Disease and Ageing, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

    Joanne heads the Biological Neuropsychiatry and Dementia research unit in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. Joanne's research in neuropsychiatric disorders is focused on preventative interventions and risk prediction, and understanding the biological underpinnings of these disorders, as well as biomarker identification (including epigenetics). Her research interests include dementia; cognitive ageing; epigenetics; depression; stress/trauma; biological underpinnings and frailty.

  • Adeel razi

    Associate Professor (Research), Psychology, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University

    Adeel is head of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, performing cross-disciplinary research combining engineering, physics, and machine-learning approaches to answer questions that are motivated by and grounded in neurobiology. The research program’s priority areas include the development of neuroscience-inspired artificial intelligence schemes to understand how brain performs reasoning, learning and planning and the use of classical psychedelics (e.g. LSD and Psilocybin) in combination with computational modelling to understand neural mechanisms underlying altered states of consciousness.

  • Amy brodtmann

    Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Victorian Heart Institute

    Amy examines vascular contributions to late-life cognition. She’s interested in modifiable risk and identifying interventions to prevent post-stroke dementia and pathological cognitive ageing. She aims to improve the diagnostic pathway for people with dementia and their carers by developing novel biomarkers.

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