Profile

Profile – Dr Coco Newton

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Coco Newton

Name:

Dr Coco Newton

Job title:

PhD Student

Place of work / study:

University College London

Area of Research:

Spatial navigation and cognition in early Alzheimer’s disease

How is your work funded?

Joint funding between Alzheimer’s Society PhD Studentship and Merck Investigator Studies Program

Tell us a little about yourself:

I’m a third year PhD student (Now Completed) at the University of Cambridge (Now at UCL), supervised by Professors Li Su, John O’Brien and Dr Dennis Chan (now at UCL). I have a BSc in Biomedical Science from King’s College London and worked previously at UCL as a research assistant. I’ve worked with the dementia gaming app and citizen science project Sea Hero Quest, and was also part of the Centric Lab, a neuroscience research lab aiming to make urban design healthier for at-risk communities. At Cambridge, my PhD work investigates novel cognitive outcome measures for preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease using immersive virtual reality tests of navigation.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself:

I was in the winning Cambridge blue boat crew in the 2021 lightweight women’s Oxford-Cambridge boat race

Why did you choose to work in dementia?

I originally began research into spatial navigation at UCL, but when I discovered the potential of applying this understanding to Alzheimer’s disease, I knew I had to explore it further. My grandmother had dementia, and watching her go through the diagnosis process made me realise we could do so much better than the clinical tests we currently use.

Can we find you on Twitter?

Comments 3

  1. Agetech – solving society’s biggest problems of the next century? - Next-Up

    […] Dr Coco Newton is a cognitive neuroscientist and developing tech to detect Alzheimer’s way earlier than currently – so early, before there are any visible signs […]

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  2. Cyndy Fiddy

    ….and why not a 50/50 ratio of men to women tested?!

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  3. John Toal

    My wife died of Alzheimer’s. She was formaly diagnosed four years before she died. I recognised a problem 15 years before she was diagnosed. Nine years before she was diagnosed I told her to give up her one day a week job. It came about when I gave her a lift to work and she couldnt tell me the directions. She had been travelling to the same place for about five years and had been using the satnav. I saw reference to Dr Newton’s study on navigational skills and I am available to discuss.

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