Download a PDF of the 2012 Annual Report - Black Dog Institute

ManagingDepressionGrowing OlderA guide for professionals and carersHealthy BrainAgeingResearch Leaders – Professor Henry Brodaty,Professor Perminder Sachdev‘Greying of the Black Dog’Kerrie Eyers, Gordon Parker and Henry BrodatyAn estimated eight per cent of older adults inAustralia experience depression and the number willincrease as the population ‘greys’.Black Dog Institute partners with affiliateorganisations such as the UNSW Centre for HealthyBrain Ageing to find answers to help older Australianslive a productive and healthy life in these golden years.Research activity from 2012 includes:Reducing behavioural and psychologicalsymptoms of dementia in the community – Nonpharmacologicalinterventions delivered by familycaregivers have the potential to reduce the frequencyand severity of behavioural and psychological symptomsof dementia, with the effect at least equallingthat of pharmacotherapy.Changing topological patterns in normalageing – Researchers examined normal ageing fromthe perspective of topological patterns of structuralbrain networks constructed from two healthy agecohorts 20 years apart. We then constructed structuralbrain networks using 90 cortical and subcorticalregions as a set of nodes, and further analysed thetopological properties of the age-specific networks.We found that the brain structural networks of bothcohorts had small-world architecture, and the oldercohort (age range 64-68) had lower global efficiencybut higher local clustering in the brain structural networkscompared with the younger cohort (age range44-48). The older cohort had reduced hemisphericasymmetry and lower centrality of certain brainregions, but that of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) wasnot different. These structural network differences mayprovide the basis for changes in functional connectivityand cognitive function as we age and may explain thedevelopment of cognitive disorders and depression inold age.BLACK DOG 201229