Professor Matthew Kiernan

But if you're walking around the house and you fall over, you're on the street and you fall over, that's abnormal.

away yeah your legs give away or your balance is affected and you fall over that's often the beginning of understanding that someone may be suffering from a vascular brain process so falls are very much characteristically linked the other thing is obviously your cognition so so family members notice that maybe you're not as sharp as you were you seem to be forgetting things um

You might be, I mean, sometimes, for instance, you might drive the car home and, you know, hit the side of the car in the garage.

You might not even mention you've done it.

You know, another family member notices there's a dent in the car.

How did that happen?

So it's the behavior and the fine tuning of motor function or brain function is being affected.

And it's usually often the family members, people in the house, children, partners who notice and they try and encourage a medical review.

What are you looking for when you do those very fundamental tests?

So it's about motor function.

So we're seeing how someone walks.

We're seeing their gait.

We're seeing their gait length.

And then part of that is what we call tandem walking.

So the police stole our test.

This is a neurology test, but doing heel in front of the toe in a straight line.

And these are markers for things like vascular dementia.

Also getting someone to stand on the spot and close their eyes.

Because if they're having problems with nerve function in their legs in particular...

Other senses start to take off, so they're relying on their eyes.