Donna McCade

Research suggests that individuals with dementia are less accurate in their ability to recognise emotions such as anger, fear and sadness. This can have a devastating impact on the social behaviour of individuals with dementia and their social relationships. For example, poor emotion recognition abilities predicts increased impact amongst those caring for loved ones with dementia. 

Oxytocin is a hormone which has been found to improve emotion recognition ability and enhance trust. Dr McCade's project is an intervention programme aimed at individuals with Alzheimer’s disease to improve the accuracy in their emotion recognition and also to reduce caregiver burden in their caregivers (i.e., family members / significant others) via an intranasal administration of oxytocin over a one week period.