Dr Tracy Melzer has been awarded a Health Research Council grant for a four-year Christchurch study on changes in the brain that could predict dementia.

A groundbreaking Christchurch study hopes to identify brain changes that could predict the onset of dementia. MRI expert Dr Tracy Melzer has been awarded a $500,000 Health Research Council grant to study the brains of Cantabrians with Parkinson’s disease, the second most common cause of dementia after Alzheimers. The brain scans of 25 healthy participants and 70 people with Parkinson’s with varying levels of cognitive impairment will be studied, looking for patterns or differences in tau build-up and blood flow between people with dementia and others. Melzer is part of the New Zealand Brain Research Institute, and has spent the past few years scanning and studying the brains of Parkinson’s sufferers.