Esha Massand

I work at Birkbeck University London, in the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development to investigate the links between Down's syndrome, learning disabilities and dementia. I work under the supervision of Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith to study infants aged six months to three years using methodologies such as electrophysiology, eye-tracking, behavioural measures and parental questionnaires.
People with Down's syndrome are much more likely than the general population to develop Alzheimer's Disease. With teams of geneticists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists at UCL's Institute of Neurology, the Blizard Institute at Queen Mary, University of London and the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) we aim to better understand the links between Down's syndrome and Alzheimer 's disease. Some of the questions we hope to answer include: how do learning disabilities develop in people with Down's syndrome; what are the processes involved with the cognitive decline that occurs with age in Down's syndrome; why do some people with Down's syndrome go on to get dementia and others do not, despite having Alzheimer's brain pathology? We are looking for markers that can identify people with Down's syndrome who go on to develop dementia, to identify risk markers during infancy and target preventative treatment. Together with these other labs, we will incorporate large age cohorts, and integrate current understanding within research domains such as human cognitive development, ageing, neurobiology, genetics and cellular modelling, as well as mouse models.
If you have a baby or toddler with Down's syndrome and would like to participate in the research (all travel and overnight hotel costs reimbursed), please email [email protected] for details.

My Post-doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Washington allowed me to investigate clinical neuro-markers of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) in tasks such as social cognition, imitation, and spontaneous brain activity.

My PhD investigated episodic memory in ASD. This is the memory system that characterises idiosyncratic recollections of space and time. My research focused on a specific methodology called electroencephalography (the measurement of electrical brain activity) when participants completed various memory tasks. I have published the findings from my PhD in journals such as the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.