will take place on Tuesday, October 23, 2018 from 15:00 to 16:00 hours in CBBM Building, Ground Floor, Seminar Room B1/B2.
Host: Prof. Nico Bunzeck
Institute of Psychology I
University of Lübeck
Abstract
Amyloid and Tau pathology progress along distinct anatomical networks before they overlap in the course of Alzheimer’s disease. As a consequence, both pathologies are likely to affect different functional brain networks and related cognitive functions in the early course of AD. To dissect pathology-specific impact on cognition, we utilize recent insights into the fine-grained architecture of functionally and anatomically separated pathways that support episodic memory, notably different hippocampal-cortical pathways for the mnemonic discrimination of object and scene information. I will give an overview of the early network distribution patterns of amyloid and tau pathology in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease and will present recent biomarker and neuroimaging data from fMRI and PET studies (German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, DZNE and UC Berkeley) and will relate pathology to object- and scene-pathway dysfunction. I will discuss how these types of insights could benefit early assessment, trajectory monitoring and interventional stratification in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.
Biosketch
Emrah Düzel obtained his medical degree from the University of Bonn in 1993 and completed his M.D. thesis at the Department of Epileptology in Bonn. He conducted research fellowships on the electrophysiology of human memory at University of California, Davis, and the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and completed his clinical neurology training in 2001 in Magdeburg. Since 2005 he is at the University College London (UCL) Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and since 2008, he is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. Düzel also heads the Institute of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research at the University of Magdeburg and is a Honorary Principle at the UCL Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging.
Emrah Düzel has a long-standing interest in the functional anatomy of human episodic memory networks, neuromodulatory circuits, their alterations in aging and early stages of neurodegeneration and their scope for plasticity. For this purpose, his group uses and advances multimodal imaging techniques including fMRI, EEG / MEG and PET. We are particularly interested in how the degeneration of dopaminergic and noradrenergic neurotransmitter systems contribute to cognitive dysfunction in old age by impacting on motivation, decision making, memory consolidation and plasticity. We approach this problem from the vantage point of how declarative memory processes, motivation and decisions making interact.
