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Professor John-Paul Taylor
I am a Professor of Translational Dementia Research and honorary consultant in old age psychiatry at Newcastle University. Clinically I lead a specialist Lewy body dementia clinic in Newcastle upon Tyne and I provide liaison sessions to Parkinson’s clinics in Northumbria.
I have research interests in neurophysiology and neuroimaging and their application to dementia populations, particularly the Lewy body dementias. Specific areas of research include:
· Understanding the neurobiological basis for cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms in Lewy body dementias including cognitive fluctuations and visual hallucinations.
· The application of novel neuroimaging and neurophysiological techniques in dementia
· The clinical characterisation of visual hallucinations
· Understanding the dynamic interaction between vision and cognition.
· Developing new biomarkers which can be used for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment stratification.
Dr Sean Colloby
My research interest is in the development and application of advanced neuroimaging analysis approaches and how they can be applied to Lewy body dementias to better diagnosis and understand these diseases.
Carein Todd
I am a research assistant within the Institute if Neuroscience, currently working on the Cholinergic ResponsE in Early lewy body Disease (CREED) study with Professor John-Paul Taylor.
Dr Michael Firbank
My research interests are neuroimaging in the aging brain, including functional/diffusion MRI. I'm currently providing MR physics support for the new 3T PET-MR scanner. I also have an interest in computerised cognitive testing.
Dr Alison Killen
I am a research assistant within the Institute of Neuroscience / Institute for Ageing and Health and my main research interests are in psychological interventions for carer and patient support in dementia with Lewy bodies. I am currently working on the VEEG Stim study.
Dr Julia Schumacher
I am post-doctoral research associate at the Institute of Neuroscience working with Professor John-Paul Taylor, Prof. Andrew Blamire, Dr. Peter Gallagher, Dr. Luis Peraza, and Prof. Marcus Kaiser. I am exploring cognitive fluctuations in dementia with Lewy bodies using resting state network analysis on MRI and EEG data.
Dr Lauren Walker
My main research interests lie in investigating the effects of multiple pathological lesions on clinical phenotype in neurodegenerative disorders (e.g. Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body disease). Using a quantitative clinico-patholigical approach we aim to tease is distinct clinico-pathologcal phenotypes which may ultimately lead to tailored treatment options for patients.
Dr Daniel Erskine
My research is focused on Lewy body diseases, collectively the second most common form of neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease. Much of my current work is attempting to understand why Lewy bodies form and if they are harmful to neurons.
I have a major interest in rare neurometobolic diseases, particularly those with mechanistic overlaps with Lewy body diseases such as sphingolipid storage disorders and mitochondrial diseases. I am currently leading neuropathological studies into the sphingolipid storage disorders metachromatic leukodystrophy, Krabbe disease and Tay-Sachs disease, and mitochondrial disease cases resulting from nuclear DNA variants, including a significant cohort with Lewy body pathology. I am also involved in further studies investigating the neuropathology of Alpers' syndrome, mitochondrial encephalopathy lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes (MELAS) and myoclonic epilepsy with ragged red fibres (MERRF).
Dr Kat Da Silva Morgan
I am a researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience, studying under the supervision of Dr John-Paul Taylor and Dr Greg Elder. My project is investigating the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on visuoperceptual function in Lewy Body Dementia as a potential therapeutic technique in collaboration with the Institute of Neurosciences, Kolkata.
Claire Airey
I’m a Research nurse specialising in Dementia with Lewy Bodies. I have worked in memory/dementia services for 24 years.
I work alongside Professor John-Paul Taylor in the LBD clinic as well as in the Research Delivery Team within CNTW.
PhD Students
Dr Jahfer Hasoon
I am a clinical research associate within the Institute of Neuroscience and psychiatry trainee working in CNTW. My research interests include computational neuroscience and biomarkers in DLB. I am currently working on the Cholinergic ResponsE in Early lewy body Disease (CREED) study with Professor John-Paul Taylor.
Joanna Wilson
I am a PhD student under the supervision of Professor John-Paul Taylor and Professor Lynn Rochester, working in collaboration with the Lewy Body Lab and the Brain and Movement research group (BAM). I am investigating the neural correlates of gait in older adults, and how these alter in Parkinson's Disease.
Kirsty Olsen
I am a research assistant within the Institute of Neuroscience/Institute for Ageing and currently work on the SHAPED study which focuses on visual hallucinations across eye disease, Lewy Body disease and dementia. My main research interests concentrate on driving and dementia and I maintain a resource website related to this. Recently we have produced a set of guidelines for clinicians. The document - Driving with dementia or mild cognitive impairment: consensus guidelines for clinicians, the purpose of these guidelines is to provide clinicians with an understanding of their legal and clinical responsibilities, as well as a framework on which to base appropriate management of those who drive with a diagnosis of dementia or mild cognitive impairment.
Undergraduate Students
Emma Packer
I am a third year Biomedical Science student completing my dissertation under the supervision of Professor John-Paul Taylor and Kirstie Olsen. I will be utilising the data collected in the SHAPED study to investigate the relationship between visual acuity and the severity of visual hallucinations in individuals with Charles Bonnet syndrome, dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
Affiliated Members
Dr Paul Donaghy
I am a Clinical Research Associate. My research interests include prodromal DLB, biomarkers for early diagnosis and the effect of amyloid in DLB.
Dr Joseph Kane
I'm a Clinical Research Associate at the Institute of Neuroscience. My research involves the clinical diagnosis and management of Dementia with Lewy bodies and the use of metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) imaging in DLB.
Dr Prabitha Urwyler
• I was a visiting researcher (Sept 2016 -July 2018) under the guidance of John-Paul Taylor. During my stay at Newcastle, my primary research focused on investigation of pre-stimulation oscillations/rhythms as a marker for visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s Disease dementia. Other projects that were simultaneously investigated was the validation of the North-East Visual Hallucination Interview (NEVHI) severity score and the prevalence of multimodal hallucinations across disorders. Another exploratory study was “Feasibility of Synchrotron-Based Microtomography to Identify α-Synuclein Oligomers in Post-Mortem Tissue”.
• My current position is as a senior researcher/deputy group leader at the ARTORG Center/Gerontechnology and Rehabilitation group, University of Bern at Bern, Switzerland. Current research in Bern cover 1) cognitive training and assessment tools as early diagnostic and prevention methods in older adults and pre-clinical subjects 2) Tele-rehabilitation and assistive technologies for neurocognitive disorders.
Prabitha's ResearchGate
Previous Members
Kevin Ansah
I am a 4th-year pharmacy undergraduate working within the Institute of Neuroscience. My main research interest is to investigate the data sets of anticholinergic burden on Lewy body dementia patients and critique whether there is an impact in patients neuropsychiatric or cognitive function.
Myrto Stylianou
I am a PhD student under the supervision of Dr Fiona LeBeau and Professor John-Paul Taylor. My main interest is investigating for sleep EEG alterations in an animal model of α-synuclein through in vivo electrophysiology. My project also involves the analysis of human EEG recordings to identify patterns relevant to dementia with Lewy bodies.
Dr Zhe Kang Law
I am a clinical research associate within the Institute of Neuroscience, currently working on the Cholinergic ResponsE in Early lewy body Disease (CREED) study with Professor John-Paul Taylor.
Ramtin Mehraram
I am a PhD student within the Institute of Neuroscience, funded by the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre, and under the supervision of Dr. Luis Peraza, Prof. Marcus Kaiser and Professor John-Paul Taylor. My research relates on assessing confirmatory biomarkers for Dementia with Lewy Bodies through analysis of electrophysiological brain measures, such as EEG and MRI data.
Ryan Donaldson
I am an MRes student. I will be investigating the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to measure the age-related cholinergic differences between young and old populations
Fatemeh Zavari Husseini
I will be researching on the relationship between the low level of vision perception and cognitive problems in three different groups of patients (eye-diseased, PD, and dementia) across time, and who have end up with visual hallucinations or whether their visual hallucinations have become worse.
Dr Greg Elder
I am a post-doctoral research assistant within the Institute for Ageing and Health and my main research interests are in dementia with Lewy bodies, and sleep.
Megan Ingham
I am an MRes student at the Institute of Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr John-Paul Taylor and Dr Luis Peraza. I am investigating whether cortical atrophy can be predicted from functional imaging in Parkinson’s disease, using a patient cohort from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative study database.
Shannon Shin-Yu Chen
I am a second year undergraduate student at Princeton University and am majoring in neuroscience on the premedical track. As a student visitor to Newcastle University, I will be testing linear models to study the correlation between cortical atrophy and deterioration of cognitive function in Parkinson's Disease by using a patient cohort from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative study database. I will be conducting research under the supervision of Dr. Jon-Paul Taylor, Dr. Luis Peraza, and PhD student Julia Schumacher.
Dr Nicholas Murphy
I am a former PhD student of John-Paul Taylor, Sara Graziadio, and Lynn Rochester; my thesis (entitled: Understanding the temporal dynamics of visual hallucinations in Parkinson's disease with dementia) was successfully defended in April 2016. My current position is as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where the central themes of my research are the understanding and subsequent improvement of cognitive control in schizophrenia. At present I maintain several active collaborations with members of the Lewybody lab on different branches of the VEEGStim and CATFIELD projects, where my background in EEG and concurrent TMS-EEG processing is applied.
Dr Luis R. Peraza
My main research interests are the Ageing Brain and Computational Analysis of Neurodegenerative Diseases. I investigate datasets from healthy controls and patients acquired by different neuroimaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in their functional and structural modalities (sMRI and fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Steven Errington
I am a MRes student at the Institute for Ageing and Health, studying under the supervision of Dr Taylor, and co-supervision of Dr Firbank and Dr Collerton. My project involves an investigation of the visuo-perceptual and attentional deficits in LBD and how these may relate to visual hallucinations. I am also currently investigating the efficacy of applying two illusion tasks as surrogates or markers for visual hallucinations
Dr Xenia Kobeleva
I am a young neurologist in training and in my research I have focused on cognitive dysfunctions in neurodegenerative diseases, mainly by the means of fMRI. Recently I have become very enthusiastic about studying connectivity and data driven methods and I would like to learn as much as possible about these methods.
Collaborators
Prof Ian McKeith
I have a longstanding interest in all aspects of Lewy body dementias but in particular in matters relating to clinic-pathological diagnosis and therapeutics.
Prof Alan Thomas
Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Newcastle University and Honorary Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Dr Mark Baker Newcastle webpage
Dr Frédéric Blanc webpage
Dr Laura Bonanni ResearchGate
Daniel Collerton Newcastle webpage
Kristinn Johnsen (Mentis Cura) ResearchGate
Prof Marcus Kaiser Newcastle webpage
Kolkata's Institute of Neurosciences, www.neurokolkata.org/
Dr. Fiona Le Beau Newcastle webpage
Prof Urs Moismann Webpage
Dr Kianoush Nazarpour Newcastle webpage
Prof John O’Brien webpage
Prof Marco Onofrj webpage
Prof Lynn Rochester webpage
Leo Tomasevic ResearchGate
Google Sites
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