Imaging and the Aging Brain

Organizers

Mony J. de Leon, EdD

Department of Psychiatry
New York University
email | web site | publications

Mony de Leon is professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He has studied and developed imaging approaches to the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease for over 25 years. Among his qualifications, he has published over 175 papers and founded the Center for Brain Health, an interdisciplinary clinical research center at the New York University School of Medicine. De Leon is a reviewer and/or editorial board member for over 15 journals and has served on several recent NIH advisory panels in the area of early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and in the use of biomarkers for its detection.

De Leon's work is centered on the argument that the early and preclinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's is a realistic possibility. Investigators from his New York University research center wrote the first CT paper demonstrating that cortical atrophy could be measured in vivo in the disease. More recently, this group wrote the first prediction paper demonstrating that CT/MRI determined hippocampal atrophy was predictive of future Alzheimer's in subjects with mild memory impairments. De Leon and colleagues were also the first to show, using two independent imaging modalities, that imaging markers found in normal elderly can predict future MCI and Alzheimer's disease. Most recently, the New York University group has developed an automated image analysis technique called HipMask for sampling the PET scan.

Howard Federoff, MD, PhD

University of Rochester
Center for Aging and Developmental Biology
email | web site | publications

Howard Federoff is professor of neurology, medicine, microbiology, and immunology at the University of Rochester. He studies molecular mechanisms that underlie plasticity in the nervous system and looks for ways exploit these mechanisms to predictably modify the intact and damaged nervous system.

Federoff obtained his PhD and MD degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He joined the University of Rochester School of Medicine faculty as professor of neurology and became the founding chief of the division of molecular medicine and gene therapy. He went on to become director of the University of Rochester Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, the founding director of the Center for Aging and Developmental Biology, and the senior associate dean for basic research. Federoff is a member of several editorial boards, including Brain and Mind, Experimental Neurology, and Gene Therapy. He has also acted as consultant for corporations such as Promega, Integrated Nano-Technologies, Abbott Pharmaceuticals, Avigen Inc., and Amgen Inc.

Joy Hirsch, PhD

Columbia University
Department of Psychology
email | web site | publications

Joy Hirsch is professor of psychology and functional neuroradiology at Columbia University. She was recruited to Columbia University Medical Center to build and direct the new fMRI Research Center, which is focused on the investigation of systems within the brain that govern cognition, perception, sensory and motor functions as well as disease and treatment-related neurocircuitry. Her current research interests are focused on understanding the neurocircuitry that governs early and late visual processes, second-language acquisition, cognition, emotion, neuro-rehabilitation, and treatment-related mechanisms.

Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia University, Hirsch founded the fMRI laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and pioneered the introduction of brain mapping procedures for clinical applications as well as neuroimaging investigations of human vision and language. She was previously a professor at Yale University in the neuroscience program and the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences. She received her PhD in psychology from Columbia University.

George M. Martin, MD

University of Washington, Seattle
Department of Pathology
email | web site | publications

George Martin is professor of pathology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His current research interests are all related to the application of genetic concepts and methodologies to the elucidation of the pathobiology of aging in man, other mammals, and birds. He focuses on three main areas of research: the genetic basis for susceptibility and resistance to dementias of the Alzheimer type, the nature of gene action in the pathogenesis of Werner's syndrome, and DNA damage associated with aging.

Martin obtained his medical degree from the University of Washington. He has received several awards, including the National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the American Aging Association Research Medal, the Gerontological Society of America Robert W. Kleemeier Award, and the Paul Glenn Foundation Award from the Gerontological Society of America. Martin serves on the editorial board of several journals with a focus on pathology and aging and has multiple national responsibilities, such as serving on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Aging. He also served as vice president and president-elect of the Federation for Aging Research and acted as chairman of the American Federation for Aging Research Scientific Review Committee.

John Morrison, PhD

Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Department of Neuroscience
email | web site | publications

John Morrison is professor and chair of neuroscience and the Willard T. C. Johnson Professor of Geriatrics and Adult Development in Neurobiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Morrison's research incorporates basic neurobiological research on neuronal specialization and the biochemical coding of brain circuits with human neuropathology in order to illuminate the cellular events that lead to Alzheimer's disease. He also studies the neurobiological events that accompany normal aging, as well as the differences between these events and those that accompany Alzheimer's disease. Within this context, Morrison is interested in the effects of estrogen on the cerebral cortex, the interface between endocrine and neural aging, and the effects of stress on cortical neurons.

Morrison earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and completed postdoctoral study at the Salk Institute. In 1989, he joined the faculty at Mount Sinai, where he is director of the Kastor Neurobiology of Aging Laboratories. Morrison has published more than 250 scholarly works on the molecular, cellular, and neuroanatomic organization of the cerebral cortex, the cellular pathology of neurodegenerative disorders, and the neurobiology of aging. He is the recipient of numerous research awards and has served on advisory boards and review committees of multiple scientific organizations, including the National Institute of Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, Society for Neuroscience, American Federation for Aging Research, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association. He is also a cofounder of Neurome Inc., a biotech company dedicated to developing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

Al Snider, PhD

James N. Jarvie Commonweal Service
email | web site

Al Snider was appointed the executive director and CEO of the Jarvie Commonweal Service in 1997. His long-standing interest in the use of research, training, and education to attain strategic goals has enhanced Jarvie's mission.

Snider holds a PhD in sociological and anthropological studies in education from Stanford University. Prior to coming to Jarvie, he served for 13 years as deputy director of and senior research scientist at the New York State Institute for Basic Research, a neuroscience research center located on Staten Island. During that time, he received national and international acclaim for building the International Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders conference into the largest and most important research meeting in the world on Alzheimer's disease. The last such conference held under his leadership was in Amsterdam and attracted 3000 scientists and physicians from over 50 countries and featured over 1300 presentations. Earlier, he served as assistant commissioner for family and children's services in the New York State Department of Social Services. Snider is a member of the board of directors of the American Federation for Aging Research and a trustee of The Interchurch Center in Manhattan.

Keynote Speaker

Eric R. Kandel, MD
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
email | web site | publications

Eric R. Kandel is University Professor of Physiology and Psychiatry at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2000 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Arvid Carlsson of the University of Göteborg, Sweden, and Paul Greengard of the Rockefeller University, New York, for their contributions to the field of neuroscience. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute senior investigator, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and a winner of the National Medal of Science. Among his other honors he counts the Wolf prize, the Lasker Award, the Gairdner Award, and the Harvey Prize.

Kandel's seminal work with the sea slug Aplysia clearly delineated a simple behavior that could be modified by several forms of learning and could give rise to both short- and long-term memory. He then analyzed the molecular mechanisms that lead to short- and long-term memory. The work has been essential not only for understanding the basic processes of learning and memory, but for highlighting many of the cellular processes that are targets of cognitive enhancement drugs.

In response to calls for an integrated approach to understanding the biological basis of behavior, Columbia established the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior and recruited Kandel as its director in 1975. The Center—comprising faculty with appointments in the departments of anatomy and cell biology, biochemistry and molecular biophysics, genetics and development, neurology, pathology, pharmacology, physiology and cellular biophysics, and psychiatry—applies research in these disciplines to understanding the cellular and molecular basis of behavior, perception, and learning. Throughout his career, Kandel has maintained an active interest in clinical psychiatry, as well as in fostering the interchange of ideas among diverse disciplines that examine the relationship between mind and brain. He has recently published a scientific autobiography of his life and career in science, entitled In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind.

Speakers

Helene Benveniste, MD, PhD

Brookhaven National Laboratory
Medical Department
email | web site | publications

Wiesje M. van der Flier, PhD

Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam
email | publications

Wen-Biao Gan, PhD

New York University School of Medicine
Department of Physiology and Neuroscience
email | web site | publications

Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD

University of California, San Francisco
Department of Neuroscience
email | web site | publications

Stephanie Lederman, EdM

American Federation for Aging Research
publications

Ken Marek, MD

Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders
Yale University School of Medicine
email | publications

Thomas D. McRae, MD

Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals
email | publications

Mark A. Mintun, MD

Washington University School of Medicine
Department of Radiology
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Susan Molchan, MD

National Institutes of Health
National Institute on Aging
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Michael Montalto, PhD

GE Global Research Center, Biosciences
email | web site | publications

Bradford Navia, MD, PhD

Johnson & Johnson
email | publications

Maiken Nedergaard, MD, PhD

University of Rochester Medical Center
Department of Neurosurgery
email | publications

Leslie S. Prichep, PhD

New York University School of Medicine
Department of Psychiatry
Nathan S. Kline Institute
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Naftali Raz, PhD

Wayne State University
Institute of Gerontology
email | web site | publications

Eric M. Reiman, MD

Banner Alzheimer's Institute
University of Arizona
Translational Genomics Research Institute
Arizona Alzheimer's Disease Consortium
email | web site | publications

Marcin Sadowski, MD, PhD

New York University School of Medicine
Department of Neurology
email | web site | publications

Scott A. Small, MD

Columbia University Medical Center
Department of Neurology
email | web site | publications

Reisa A. Sperling, MD, MMSc

Brigham and Women's Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School
email | web site | publications

Wendy A. Suzuki, PhD

New York University
Center for Neural Science
email | web site | publications

Paul Thompson, PhD

University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine
Department of Neurology
email | web site | publications

Kamil Ugurbil, PhD

University of Minnesota Medical School
Departments of Radiology, Neurosciences, and Medicine
email | web site | publications

Michael Weiner, MD

University of California, San Francisco
Veteran Affairs Medical Unit
email | web site | publications

Alan Dove

Alan Dove earned his PhD in microbiology from Columbia University and is now a science writer and reporter for Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Journal of Cell Biology. He also teaches at the NYU School of Journalism.