Vladimir Hachinski is a Canadian clinical neuroscientist and researcher based at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University.

[2] His research pertains in the greatest part to stroke and dementia, the interactions between them and their joint prevention through holistic brain health promotion.

This discovery has added fundamental knowledge to how the brain controls the heart and blood pressure and lays the foundation for helping prevent sudden death.

In 1987, he earned a Master of Science degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, studying in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics with a focus on design, measurement, and evaluation.

He postulates that the brain has two complementary blood pressure systems, one high and one low and disturbances in each lead to different types of preventable lesions.

He also developed an eponymic “ischemic score” that continues to be widely used to identify the vascular (treatable and preventable) component of dementia.

[16] In 1986, the journal, Archives of Neurology published a series of papers by Hachinski, Harold Merskey and colleagues on the rarefaction of white matter in the brains of elderly people.

Rarefaction of white matter in the brain had already been shown to be correlated with a wide variety of health problems, but these papers were groundbreaking for two reasons especially: First, they introduced the term, “leukoaraiosis,” a word derived by Hachinski, Paul Potter and Harold Merskey to etymologically and Hippocratically describe the rarefaction; and second, they specifically highlighted a previously underappreciated relationship between vascular risk factors for cognitive impairment (i.e., treatable and preventable risk factors for both stroke and multi-infarct dementia) and leukoaraiosis.

By coining “leukoaraiosis,” Hachinski drew medical practitioners’ attention to these white matter hypodensities in the brains of patients affected by small strokes.

For this reason, in 2006, Hachinski decided to lead (with Gabrielle LeBlanc) the development of core common standards to describe the clinical, neuropsychological, imaging, genetic, and neuropathological features of cognitive impairment.

This standardization has allowed for ongoing improvement of the diagnostic criteria with new knowledge, comparison of results from different studies, and analysis & meta-analysis using “big data” techniques.

[28] Later, in 1992, he (with collaborators David Cechetto and Stephen Oppenheimer) began work to explore possible mechanisms for observed increases in catecholamines, cardiac enzymes, arrhythmias, and sudden death following acute stroke.

[35] He leads a multidisciplinary team studying for the first time together environmental, socioeconomic and individual risk and protective factors in the joint prevention of stroke, heart disease and dementia.

[44] He is leading a team from 5 Western University faculties, 5 provinces and 4 countries, to find out how and help apply the lessons widely.

Instead of using fear, warning people that if they don’t lead a healthy lifestyle they will suffer a stroke, heart disease or dementia decades later, the aim is to achieve brain/mental health now.

Coining and employing the term “brain attack,” the book was written to increase public awareness of the importance of adequate stroke care and early intervention.

[11] In addition, "Dream Waltz," composed by Hachinski and orchestrated by Jason Stanford (Professor of Theory and Composition at Western University), premiered at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria by the Brno Philharmoniker on September 24, 2013.