Lab News

News, events and achievements

Harriet goes to India to present the MEDIT-AGEING Clinical trials in November 2022

Tim passed his viva on 17th October 2022

Congratulations Dr Whitfield!

MEDIT-AGEING Consortium meeting in Mallorca October 2022

Yolanda started her PhD in October 2022

Alzheimer’s Disease International Conference June 2022

In person Lab Lunch in 2022

Lab meetings go online from 2020

Natalie receives Award for Outstanding Research Supervision

The Student Choice Awards give UCL students the opportunity to acknowledge researchers who have inspired and supported them. Natalie was recognised for her research supervision of PhD and MSc students.

Media coverage of systematic review

In a recent interview, Tim discussed the findings from his systematic review, which aimed to assess the effects of mindfulness-based programmes on cognitive function.

Two new publications receive significant media attention

Two of our recent lab publications received significant international media attention (Altmetric scores of >1000). The study on the association of repetitive negative thinking with amyloid, tau, and cognitive decline (Marchant et al., 2020) was picked up by 120 news outlets. The meta-analysis on the relationship between PTSD and dementia (Günak et al., 2020) was discussed by 132 news outlets.

The Great MEDIT-AGEING Thesis Challenge

During the virtual Silver Santé Consortium Meeting, Harriet took part in the 3 minute thesis (3MT) challenge. Her presentation was very well received, earning her 2nd place!

Marco started his PhD

Marco's PhD research focusses on the role of individual differences in meditation research. More details can be found here: https://www.marcoschlosser.com

Bilal started his PhD

The primary focus of Bilal’s PhD is to understand, improve and tailor the external factors, such as physical settings, sensorial elements and participant experience, to improve the efficacy and the impact of wellbeing interventions for seniors in clinical settings.

Harriet presented her work at AAIC 2020

At the virtual AAIC 2020 conference, Harriet presented results from her work investigating the association between reflection and markers of Alzheimer’s disease. Harriet gave two presentations, one within the main AAIC conference and another as part of the Reserve and Resilience PIA. Both talks were well received and elicited interesting questions and discussions from delegates.

Harriet also shared findings from a cross-sectional study which investigated the association between repetitive negative thinking and subjective cognitive decline. This work was presented as a digital poster with three-minute audio description.

Tim presented his work at AAIC 2020

Tim presented emerging meta-analytic findings from his review of the effects of mindfulness-based programs on cognitive function in older adults. The presentation was submitted as a five-minute talk to the Non-Pharmacological Interventions Professional Interest Area (NPI PIA) at the virtual AAIC 2020 conference. The talk was well-received, and resulted in Tim being a finalist for the NPI PIA student/early-career researcher award! Tim also shared these findings within the main AAIC conference as a digital poster with three-minute audio description, which elicited some interesting questions from delegates.

Harriet successfully passed her PhD upgrade

Harriet successfully passed her PhD upgrade in May 2020.

Tim successfully passed his PhD upgrade

Silver Santé Consortium Meeting 2019

Talk at AAIC 2019

Media & Press 2019

Our article on unpleasant meditation-related experiences has been discussed widely.

Selected media reports: Newsweek, New Scientist, Independent, BBC Radio 4, UCL News

For a full list of media reports, please visit the article's Altmetric page.

Lab dinner to celebrate the start of Harriet and Tim's PhDs

In2science

In2science student August 2018: Amber Bennett became an honorary lab member for 2 weeks. She helped score questionnaires, centrifuge blood and even generated some new research ideas!

Job offer

In September, Lise Lovland re-joined UCL as a research assistant on the TACT study at the Division of Psychiatry.

Funding

Tim Whitfield was recently awarded a Research Training Fellowship to complete his PhD, kindly supported by the Dunhill Medical Trust, a UK charity who fund high-quality research into understanding the mechanisms of ageing and treating age-related diseases. Tim's PhD proposal is based on the extended analysis of the SCD-WELL RCT dataset, a pan-European study of mindfulness in older adults with subjective cognitive decline. Tim's PhD is being supervised by Dr Zuzana Walker (SCD-WELL Clinical PI) and Dr Natalie Marchant (SCD-WELL Scientific Lead). Tim is interested in the putative cognitive effects of the intervention on key cognitive domains (e.g. executive function and memory), as well as other important outcomes such as quality of life. Tim is also working with other members of the Marchant lab to undertake a systematic review of the cognitive effects of mindfulness-based programmes in adults aged 18-65, with a plan to extend this to older adults later on in his PhD studies. Tim is excited to be working with the large SCD-WELL dataset, which offers the chance to explore the effects of a mindfulness-based programme on a greater range of outcomes than previous studies in this area.