Carol Brayne PhD, CBE, FMedSci

Carol Brayne, professor of public health medicine at Cambridge, has pioneered the study of dementia in the population, launching two major longitudinal studies of the health and cognitive functioning of 30?000 older people. The results underpin our understanding of dementia, showing (among many other things) that dementia can occur without the expected changes in brain pathology and that such changes, when they do occur, do not invariably lead to dementia. Her studies provide the basis for planning long term care needs in England and have recently shown that, age for age, the prevalence of dementia is declining.