10 | STEPS 2023 Centre for Ageing Research These explorations into the frontiers of ageing are among dozens to have emerged from Lancaster University’s Centre for Ageing Research, whose main focus is on working out how to keep us as healthy as possible before we begin to show signs of cognitive and physical wear and tear, so that the period we spend in poorer health in later life is as short as possible. The eye tracking has been done by Professor Trevor Crawford, whose work with a local NHS trust shows that a particular test causes people with Alzheimer’s to make 10 times more mistakes than control patients. Professor Susan Broughton’s research using the fruit fly to examine a ‘mini lifespan’ indicates that insulin/IGF-like signalling pathways may be important in brain ageing. They are part of an intricate network of cross-university teams involving every faculty – health and medicine, science and technology, arts and social sciences and the business school - to look not only at every aspect of ageing, but also what interventions are both possible and useful to older people and those who may support or care for them. One example of the research based in the Centre for Ageing Research, widely known as C4AR, is an interdisciplinary network focusing on a condition known as “Cognitive Frailty” in which people have begun to experience some decline in their thinking and concentration skills, but do not have dementia, and this is happening at the same time as physical function changes such as slowed walking speed (commonly described as frailty). This network is one of 11 ‘hubs’ across the UK funded by the UK Research Institute to encourage interdisciplinary research on ageing. The UK Centre for Ageing Better’s 2022 report The State Of Ageing showed that depending on where you live, there are differences of 10 years in life expectancy, and more than 17 years in reaching the point of disabling illness. The need to solve unanswered questions is great. Director for the Centre for Ageing Research Professor Carol Holland believes that this focus on investigating ‘cognitive frailty’ is a crucial part of the jigsaw, which they are starting to piece together. Eye-tracking tasks may soon act as early predictors of Alzheimer’s, and studying fruit flies is yielding secrets of how human beings may be able to stay healthy for as long as possible as they age. Psychology TMS Lab Eye Tracking Research
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