The Many Faces of Dementia (FutureLearn)

This has a huge impact on individuals and on society, so improvements in understanding, care and treatments are desperately needed. In this online course, you’ll discover key issues in dementia care and research. You’ll explore four less common forms of dementia, through the eyes of people affected by them. World-leading experts at UCL will show how research into the signs, stages, symptoms and causes of these forms can bring us closer to defeating dementia.

What topics will you cover?

This course covered four less common diagnoses of dementia, the people involved and the implications of these for our wider understanding. Core topics included:

- the symptoms and science behind familial Alzheimer’s disease

- behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia

- dementia with Lewy bodies and posterior cortical atrophy.

Learners explored and discussed the changes in the brain underlying these conditions plus how support and care can help people live well with dementia.

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

- Identify the range of symptoms that people experience as a result of less-common dementia diagnoses.

- Explain how diagnoses of dementia differ in terms of the parts of the brain affected and the causes of changes in the brain.

- Reflect upon the experience of people who are given a diagnosis of dementia.

- Explore the role of scientific research in furthering our ability to care for and treat people with dementia.

- Apply this knowledge to develop a broader understanding of the symptoms and experiences of people with more common forms of dementia.

- Evaluate your own views and experiences, in comparison to those expressed by others.

Who is the course for?

The only requirement is an interest in dementia, its effects on people and the brain.

We hope that this course will be of particular interest to:

- Anyone who works with people diagnosed with dementia

- People who have a friend or family member who has dementia

- People in the early stages of the disease

- Students with an interest in learning more about dementia