Research Projects

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) poses an unbearable impact in patients’ life, through progressive loss of cognitive capacities and overall quality of life. In Europe alone, there is currently a €280 bn yearly expenditure related to AD and ~10% of the population above 65 years old is currently affected by the disease, a figure that is expected to triple in...

Our project aims to address the need for improved informal care by training cohabitating spouse caregivers to implement music interventions that target behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, and the quality of life and wellbeing of people with dementia, and of family caregivers. Our international randomised controlled trial involving...

In the absence of a cure for dementia, most research is aimed at an early diagnosis as it opens the way to timely future care and treatment, and can help people take control of their lives and plan ahead. However, people with moderate to severe dementia and their carers are often not receiving services of the type, quality and timing that they need...

Neurodegenerative disorders, represented mostly by Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), are characterised by progressive neuronal impairment and death. In spite of the brain's known capacity for regeneration, lost neurons generally cannot be replaced. Therefore, drugs aimed at inhibiting neurodegenerative processes are likely to...

CHANCES aims at combining and integrating on-going cohort studies in order to produce evidence on ageing-related health characteristics and determinants in Europe, and their socio-economic implications. 15 cohorts participate, covering populations from 18 EU Member States, 4 associate countries, and 3 additional countries. The combination of these...

The AAL project eWare “Early Warning (by lifestyle monitoring) Accompanies Robotics Excellence” is focused on improving the lifestyle of people with dementia and their caregivers considering the extreme impact of this disease in the world. Caring for a person with dementia (PwD) can be a significant personal and emotional challenge for informal...

The EU population is increasingly exposed to new physical and chemical agents in the environment, some of which may be detrimental to public health. Of these, electromagnetic fields (EMF) are one of the most ubiquitous, with new EMF technologies and novel applications being actively developed and commercialised. To address pertinent questions on...

The overall objective of Home4Dem is to address the challenge of dementia care that is a major burden for industrialised societies, through the large-scale deployment in the market of an innovative ICT platform to enable people with dementia to live at home independently and to maintain an active social life, thus improving their quality of life...

The RECAGE project will tackle one of the most challenging problem arising during the clinical course of dementia: the so-called Behavioural and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD). The current state-of-the-art of the treatment of these symptoms is still unsatisfactory and there are many unmet needs in this area. The major objective of the...

BBMRI-ERIC: the Biobanking and BioMolecular resources Research Infrastructure - European Research Infrastructure Consortium, aims to establish, operate and develop a Pan-European distributed research infrastructure in order to facilitate the access to biological resources as well as facilities and to support high quality biomolecular and biomedical...

New knowledge is not necessarily readily applied in medicine, even when there is evidence of its effectiveness. As a result of the gap between knowing and doing, policy makers, professional care providers, patients and their families have benefited too little from new developments. Implementation research has developed models for stepwise...