Going Dutch on research

Knowledge of research techniques – often built upon years of experience – is not straightforward for new researchers or groups to pick up. As with the Meeting Centres covered in this issue, great ideas and new ways of working can come from anywhere, and it is important that these are shared widely.

To help this flow of knowledge, Alzheimer's Society and Alzheimer Nederland are jointly funding seven exchange fellowships for care and biomedical researchers to spend up to a year in the other country to establish and strengthen collaborations between research groups.

Alzheimer's Society and Alzheimer Nederland are the largest care and research charities in their respective countries. Both organisations have a proud history of funding research and the knowledge exchange fellowships will allow researchers who, on the basis of their scientific excellence, may be expected to make an important contribution to dementia research.

One exchange fellow from the University of Edinburgh, Dr Javier Escudero Rodríguez, will be joining Amsterdam's VU University Medical Center to study how mild cognitive impairment affects brain circuits that are active in forming short-term memories. He expects to find out how mild cognitive impairment modifies the way in which different areas of the brain interact with each other, which could help to detect Alzheimer's disease earlier with reliable, safe and cheap tests.