One of the first things I wanted to do after talking with Marcus Richards and Jonathan Schott was to get my blood pressure checked. Not because talking to them was stressful, but because one of the key findings from their years of researching dementia was that your heart health – even in people as young as 30 – could be a key indicator of "brain frailty" later in life. Richards and Schott are leading the world’s longest running cohort study into human health. It began just after the second world war in 1946 and participants are still being regularly tested. The inside story of that world-leading study was the first in the Insights Uncharted Brain series.

We’ve also taken an in-depth look at the experience of families of sportspeople who died from chronic traumatic encephalopathy – which is having a huge impact on the NFL and on sports like rugby and football – and how they are using that experience to help others.

And in the final long read in the series, Ruth Itzhaki talks about a career dedicated to examining one of the more controversial lines of Alzheimer’s disease research. She’s spent over 30 years looking into whether certain viruses, like the common cold sore virus, could have a role in causing it. Despite years of hostility towards the theory, the evidence backing it up is starting to build and the world’s first anti-viral clinical trial is now underway in the US.

You can hear the leader of that clinical trial, the authors of all three articles,and some of the people taking part in their studies, tell their stories in our accompanying podcast series Uncharted Brain: Decoding Dementia. All three episodes are now live via The Anthill podcast, available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you usually listen.

Plus, after reports emerged last night that a missile had struck Poland near the border with Ukraine, killing two people, we examine what this could mean for Nato.

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