Winner of the SSA Impact Prize

Anya Topiwala is a clinician scientist who studied medicine at the University of Oxford and subsequently trained in old age psychiatry. She completed a DPhil in Psychiatry investigating how alcohol affects brain health, shaping her ongoing research focus. Supported by two Wellcome fellowships, including her current work on alcohol-related dementia, she leads a research group at Oxford’s Big Data Institute. Her team examines risk and resilience factors for later-life cognitive and psychiatric disorders, integrating large-scale epidemiology, population neuroimaging, and causal inference to understand ageing brain health and inform prevention strategies. Her work bridges clinical insight and data science. 

Abstract

Alcohol and brain health: from evidence to impact

Alcohol use spans a continuum from population drinking to dependence and severe alcohol-related harm. Anya Topiwala’s research has used neuroimaging, epidemiology, electronic health records and genetics to investigate the effects of alcohol use on brain health, cognition and dementia. This talk will reflect on how this work has moved from evidence to impact: challenging assumptions that lower levels of alcohol consumption are neurologically benign; investigating the substantial burden of cognitive impairment and dementia associated with alcohol use disorders; and contributing to international dementia prevention recommendations. She will also discuss translating research beyond academia, including communicating complex evidence through the media, working with the brain injury association, Headway to develop practical public-facing information, incorporating findings into clinical care and teaching, and co-producing research with people living with alcohol dependence. Finally, she will reflect on developing early-career addiction researchers and the questions now driving this work: why vulnerability to alcohol-related brain injury differs between individuals, and how far the brain can recover when drinking is reduced or stopped.