CBR-TLSA: Longitudinal Study on Aging and Alzheimer’s in India

CBR-TATA Longitudinal Study of Aging (CBR-TLSA) Funded by

CBR-TLSA is a long-term, ongoing aging cohort study on residents of the city of Bangalore, India. Funded by TATA trusts, a philanthropic organisation, the study began in 2015 with the aim of recruiting 1000 elderly subjects from Bangalore and following them up periodically for many years. Participants are recruited from the community for comprehensive evaluation of the risk and protective factors associated with cognitive changes due to normal ageing, Alzheimer’s disease, and other related disorders. The study cohort (n=1,000) comprising of cognitively healthy individuals without dementia in the age group of 45 years and above undergo detailed assessments comprising of clinical, neurocognitive, lifestyle, anthropometric, biochemical, genetic and multi-modal neuroimaging measures at baseline and periodic follow up.

Ageing is an inevitable part of life. Older adults undergo normal, healthy ageing. Healthy ageing implies maintenance of the best possible level of mental, social and physical well-being. However, some older adults can experience memory problems as they age. If these memory problems begin to significantly affect their activities of daily living, they might need external help and support. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age-related brain disease characterized by decline in cognitive functions such as memory, language etc. and a decline in overall quality of life of affected persons as well as caregivers.

The percentage of the elderly in India has been increasing in recent years and the trend is likely to continue in the coming decades. As the percentage of elderly increase, dementia including Alzheimer’s disease will be one of the major burdens and a major socio- economic challenge. India and China will see the maximum number of new cases of dementia in the next 2-3 decades. India is unique in terms of genetic susceptibility, diversity in language, education and socio-economic backgrounds, risk factors – diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, midlife obesity, smoking and the rapidly changing socio-cultural milieu wherein the joint family system is changing to nuclear families resulting in differential impact on dementia. At present, there are no effective treatments that can cure Alzheimer’s disease once it is developed and we do not know the exact cause of Alzheimer’s disease. The CBR-TLSA will help to identify the risk and protective factors that contribute to pathogenesis and progression of dementia. We hope that this study will throw light on these unanswered questions.

Flagship Projects

Prof. K. V. S. Hari

Director

Prof. K. V. S. Hari joins CBR with over 30 years of experience in research, teaching, and leadership. With a PhD in Systems Science from the University of California San Diego, he has been a Faculty Member of the Department of ECE, Indian Institute of Science, since 1992 and served as its Chair from 2015 to 2017.

Besides holding Visiting Faculty appointments at premier universities like Stanford and KTH, Stockholm, he built and nurtured enterprising collaborations with leading research groups at Oxford University, TU Delft, and CMC Vellore, among other institutes. He is a Fellow of IEEE, INAE, and INSA and Editor-in-Chief (Electrical Sciences) of Sadhana – Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences, published by Springer.

Over the years, he earned unique recognition for his exemplary contribution through several prominent leadership positions in academia and industry.

His current research interests are centred on data science and applications of signal processing to solve problems in neuroscience and medicine.

Please visit https://ece.iisc.ac.in/~hari/ for more information.

Prof. Y. Narahari

Former Director

Dr. Y. Narahari has been on the faculty at the Department of Computer Science and automation, Indian Institute of Science since February 1988. He was Chair of the Department during December 2009 – July 2014. He was the Dean, Division of EECS (Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Sciences) at IISc from August 2014 till July 2021. He was chairing the Office of DIGITS (Digital Campus and Informational Technology Services) during January 2016-December 2020. He is a part of the AI Research Cluster and has been the convener of the Pratiksha Trust Initiative on Brain, Computation, and Data Science at the Institute since 2015.

He is an elected fellow of: IEEE, New York (FIEEE); Indian National Science Academy (FNA), New Delhi; Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), Bangalore; Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE), New Delhi; and the National Academy of Sciences (FNASc), Allahabad. He is a recipient of the J.C. Bose National Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. In 2009, he received the IISc Alumni Award for Research Excellence in Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science.

He has authored or co-authored three books: Game Theory and Mechanism Design (IISc Press and World Scientific) (2014); Game Theoretic Problems in Network Economics and Mechanism Design Solutions (2009) (Springer Monograph); and Performance Modeling of Automated Manufacturing Systems (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs) (1992).

His work has been driven by talented and brilliant students: 23 of them have completed Ph.D.; 18 have completed Master’s by Research; more than 100 have completed M.Tech. projects. Currently, the group consists of 6 Ph.D. students and 6 M.Tech. project students.

The main thread in his research is to apply game theory, mechanism design, and artificial intelligence techniques to research problems at the interface of computer science and economics. He is also exploring the application of AIML techniques to digital agriculture and public health problems.

Please look up https://gtl.csa.iisc.ac.in/hari for more details.

Prof. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath

Founding Director

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath obtained her Ph.D from the University of Mysore in 1981. In 1986, after completing her post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, USA, she joined the Department of Neurochemistry at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, (NIMHANS) Bangalore. In 1999, the Dept. of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India sought her out to help establish the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), an autonomous institution of DBT, Ministry of Science and Technology as a centre of excellence and to co-ordinate and network neuroscience research groups in the country. She continued as Founder Director, NBRC till May 2009, when she returned to Bangalore at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) as Professor and Founder Chair of the newly created Centre for Neuroscience. She is currently Founder Director, Centre for Brain Research (CBR) at Indian Institute of Science.

During her tenure as Director of NBRC, she provided visionary leadership at NBRC, which in a very short period attained a position of being an internationally acclaimed centre of excellence. NBRC was granted “Deemed University” status in May 2002 to help promote human resource development in an inter-disciplinary manner. She networked 45 institutions around the country with NBRC with a goal to share resources and promote neuroscience. She then established the Centre for Neuroscience at IISc leveraging the expertise at IISc in mathematics, computation and engineering. The newly established Centre for Brain Research is a unique public-private partnership between IISc (a public funded institution) and Pratiksha Trust (a philanthropy) that funds CBR. Research at CBR is focused on aging brain and a large, prospective longitudinal study of 10,000 againg individuals has been initiated for the first time in India. In addition, she has received generous funding from Tata Trusts, which has paved the way for starting a longitudinal study in an urban cohort.

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath is elected Fellow of all the 3 science academies in India, namely Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India. She is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Neurosciences and Third World Academy of Sciences. She is a recipient of the prestigious S.S. Bhatnagar award (1996), Omprakash Bhasin Award (2001) and the J.C. Bose National Fellowship (2006), S.S. Bhatnagar Medal, INSA (2016) and the civilian honour, Padma Shri (civilian honor, 2010). She is also a fellow of American Academy of Advancement of Science, USA (2019).

CBR-TLSA