Biography:

Saeid Taheri joined University of South Florida in 2015 as a faculty in Neurodegenerative diseases. His areas of interest include neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and blood-brain barrier (BBB). Prior to joining USF, he worked as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences at MUSC where he was Principal Investigator to elucidate the role of BBB in vascular dementia. He has developed MR techniques in vivo to quantify the BBB transfer rates. He received his PhD from University of New Mexico (UNM) USA and completed his Post-doctoral fellowship in the BRAIN Center at UNM HSC with special focus on BBB in stroke and dementia.

Abstract:

Biography:

Ellie Robinson-Carter is an Illustrator, Researcher, Creative Dementia Practitioner and Lecturer based in Falmouth, UK. She devises creative frameworks and invites individuals to take ownership of them, fostering their authorial voices and personal narratives. Working locally, nationally and internationally she interacts with people living with dementia and their carers, using creative practice to nurture individual’s self-confidence, independence and self-expression. She also collaborates with other creative practitioners such as illustrator Violeta Noy (www.sophiesproject.com) and poet Sally Crabtree (https://synapticknitter.com/Passing-theParcel).

Abstract:

The arts provide an incredibly valuable resource through which people living with dementia can be empowered to live well: with more evidence being released about the benefits of art practice for people living with dementia - both on neurological and social levels - there is more reason than ever to delve further into its potential. Ellie Robinson-Carter has created and delivered numerous international projects which are uniquely designed to best suit people living with dementia. The projects encourage and enable individuals through person-led collaboration and co-authorship. They are of a highly professional standard, some being published and with professional exhibitions, meaning individuals are taking part in projects which empower them as artists, writers and creators. Her projects have been funded by various bodies, including the Big Lottery, Arts Council and FEAST. As is the case for all of us, people living with dementia wants to feel connected, useful and necessary to their communities and society more widely. Along with a diagnosis of dementia, established roles in their social networks are challenged and can become difficult to maintain. Art creates a safe yet exciting and rewarding space for individuals to express themselves creatively, in ways that works for them, providing participants with cognitive stimulation, experimentation, as well as reconnection to previous skills and the acquisition of new ones.

Biography:

Abstract:

In this work, we propose a framework to do classification between demented and non-demented patients using longitudinal statistical analysis. Though in practice, we often use the detailed clinical findings to establish a possible hypothesis about, whether the patient has dementia or not, nonetheless an automatic algorithm to identify a patient to be demented (D)/ non-demented (ND) is required. Some of the recent works in this regime includes [1,2,3]. We propose an algorithm for this automatic identification based on a sequence of MR scans collected over a time period. The proposed algorithm is based on the research of the second author have done during his PhD at University of Florida, USA. Before going into the detail of our experimental setup, we will briefly describe the proposed algorithm. Given a temporal sequence of MR scans for a patient (identified with a path on a high dimensional hypersphere), we identified the temporal sequence as the “average” of the data points on the path and the variation, captured by the principal subspace. This identification is robust to any affine transformation of the path including rotation, translation of the MR scans. Notice that in the collection time of MR scans, the scans can be a transformation of each other due to several aspects including alignment of a patient, MRI machine etc. In order to test our proposed framework, we used the benchmark OASIS dataset, which consists of at least two MR brain scans of each of the 150 subjects, aged between 60 to 90 years. In order to avoid gender effects, we have used MR scans of male patients from three visits separated by at least one year. In our dataset, we have 12 ND and 11 D subjects. We have computed an atlas from the MR scans and non-rigidly register each scan to the atlas to identify each MR scan as a point on the unit hyperpshere of dimension 892. For each subject, this essentially gives us a path on the hypersphere. After using our representation mentioned in the previous paragraph, for each subject we have identification with a point on the hypersphere and a subspace (capturing the variation in the path). We used a standard nearest average classifier. We first computed the average path for each class (D and ND) over the training data. Then for a test subject we assign it to the class with the nearest average path. Due to the small amount of data, we have chosen a leave-one-out framework, i.e., we randomly put aside one subject from each class and then use the rest of the subjects for training and repeat this process. Using this classification framework, we can correctly identify 11 out of 12 ND subjects and 10 out of 11 D subjects, achieving 91.3% classification accuracy. The above experimentation is a clear indication of the usefulness of an automatic differentiation technique between demented and non-demented subjects. As a future direction, we want to investigate our proposed framework on large scale data t sets.

Biography:

Olessia Gorkovenko is currently a PhD (Psych) student at UNISA in South Africa. She runs a center “Pilatelicious” in Johannesburg. She is the Distributor at the WellLab, a premier laboratory diagnostic testing organization. She has published numerous papers in reputed journals, wrote a book and has been serving as an Editorial Board Member of a Journal (ispcp-trcp.org/about.html). She has a passion for teaching and coaching and is extremely meticulous in achieving the best results. She works with her students and clients, and then ensures that no mistakes are made and clients are staying motivated. She carefully checks with assessments and strategies, training routines, nutrition plans and therapeutic advice. If she has a suggestion to make, she won’t hesitate to do so if it’s in her clients benefit and helps them to achieve a better result, that’s her main goal and purpose, to help clients become better and achieve better results. She operates on the fundamentals of positive psychology and approaches that focus on the performance improvements as a result of holistic development. She is a firm believer of best practices. She always shares knowledge and collaboration between stakeholders in order to reach a common goal.

Abstract:

Vascular dementia often displays multiple cognitive risks and problems, including memory impairment, aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, or problems with executive functioning. More recently we linked the association between childhood physical and mental health ability and dementia occurrence. The study by Huang and colleagues has found that having a lower MI and IQ particularly as a child increases the risk of developing vascular dementia, which is caused by various problems, and blood supply to the brain is one of the most common. The pattern of association differs between the sexes and the risk increases in the lowest intelligence groups in both sexes similarly. The hypothesis behind all these studies of cognitive and emotional reserves or brain-body reserves is that some people’s brains and bodies may be more resilient to aging, stress, pollution and neuro-degeneration than others. The study by Huang and colleagues furthers our understanding in this area and there are now multiple high-quality epidemiological studies linking poorer intelligence in early life with dementia risk. However, as with all observational research, there remains the need to clarify whether these associations are causal. Further complicating interpretation of these studies is the fact that multiple-intelligence is a very complex trait, is subject to a degree of the development of the various intelligences, genetic influences, and potentially has a bidirectional relationship with socio-geo-economic status, and education. This paper analyses subjects a plausible mechanism— emotion-cognitive reserve—we now need to consider interventional research - the life courses to improve on—or ideally multiple—of these factors is there. If, as a result, the emotion-cognitive reserve could be modified before the clinical onset of dementia (even if Alzheimer disease were present in the brain), this may delay the onset of these clinical symptoms which would, in turn, reduce the number of people affected by dementia worldwide. These are the parameters for the risk assessment and the treatment should focus on. Given the growing global public health burden of dementia, this is a vital question.

Biography:

Marija Litviņenko has obtained her graduation form Faculty of Medicine, Riga Stradiņš University in 2018. Currently, she is a first year Resident student in Neurology at Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital. She has participated in international conferences in Warsaw, Kaunas, Riga, presenting case reports and research works. She is also one of the former Project Managers in IFMSA-Latvia.

Abstract:

Cognitive function is a process that makes every human a different person. It is also a privilege which dementia may take from us. With the development of neuroscience, we have learned that cognition not only depends on isolated functioning of brain but consists of many different interactions in human body. Onset of cognitive impairment, a condition associated with further development of dementia, has many risk factors such as depression, cardiovascular risk factors, malnutrition and many others. One of the latest highlights is a connection between gut microbiota, a term used to describe all microorganisms living in human intestines, and brain functioning. It has been proven that, alterations in gut microbiota structure are connected with presence of other disorders, for example psychoneurological or gastrointestinal. Data from recent studies suggests that, it can be involved in pathophysiology of cognitive impairment through variable pathways including production of neuroactive substances, modulation of vagal activity and other. However there is lack of human studies temporarily limiting any clinical usage of this information. Nevertheless existence of gut-brain axis and role of intestinal microbiota has great potential for future investigations and development of novel therapeutic strategies for people with neurodegenerative disorders

Biography:

Edward Chan has completed his Masters in Nutritional Medicinewith theSociety for Advancement of Hormones & Healthy Aging Medicine Malaysia, Masters in Learning from Lancaster University, UK andDoctorate in Psychology from the Intercultural Open University School of Medicine. He is the principal consultant of WellLab, a premier laboratory diagnostic testing organisation. He has published numerous papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of repute.

Abstract:

Traditional lipid profiles do not identify the risk of VD that are caused by the presence of small dense LDL and IDL particles. Dangerous LDL particles may hide behind normal cholesterol levels and, conversely, elevated cholesterol levels do not inevitably have to be associated with a VD risk. Studies (eg Reitz et.al. 2004) have shown that the classical lipid profiles of patients with coronary artery diseases do not significantly differ from those of healthy persons. LDL cholesterol, the lipid that is mostfrequently associated with vascular dementia, is heterogeneous and consists of up to seven sub-fractions. Large circulating LDL particles are less atherogenic. This paper analyses subjects’ lipoprotein into five major classes: chylomicrons, very low density lipoprotein (VLDL), intermediate density lipoprotein (IDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL). Half of subjects without vascular dementia have higher cholesterol levels. A considerable portion of vascular dementia patients have low cholesterol levels. Individual differences exist in particular with respect to the LDL levels and here, even more importantly, in the size distribution of the LDL particles. The small LDL particles in particular have a very high atherogenic potential. It is less important how much cholesterol a patient has, but which type of cholesterol is elevated and which size distribution the cholesterol particles have. These are the parameters the risk assessment and thetreatment should focus on.

Biography:

Despoina Drivakou has completed her Bsc of Psychology and then continued with a Msc in Medicine school. Now she is a PhD candidate in medicine school. She has comleted a four year training in systemic aproach psychotherapy too. Despoina Drivakou has a long experience working with people with dementia in a nursing house in Thessaloniki- KREOUZIOS- and teaching experience aswell. This year she is teaching psychology in NYC college- Thessaloniki. Last year one of the subjects she was teaching was Cognitive impairement in elderly populations, in Metropolitan College-Thessaloniki. She is a private practice psychologist / psychotherapist in Thessaloniki.

Abstract:

This oral presentation is based on a 4 year practice in KREOUZIOS nursing house, cited in Thessaloniki-Greece. The dynamic of this nursing house is 52 patients, 9 nurses, 2 clearing staff and 1 doctor. The criteria for someone to have a bed in this place, was to have a type of dementia or other neurological deficiency, like Parkinson or stoke patients, a not self-service person, because of mobility problems or when a rehabilitation center couldn’t provide any more help to the patient. A part of the cost for the hospitalization comes from the NHS, and the other half is coming from the personal income. Most of the patients are coming to the nursing house and they live there till the end of their life. Living with dementia in a nursing house, is quite difficult when there are no daily activities and impacts. Life turns boring and miserable, especially when the only interest every day is the feeding procedure, medication and hygienic procedure or doctor’s daily visits. My first day in Kreouzios nursing house was one of the most horrible days of my career. I Will neve forge the feeling in my stomachi when I metà the condizioni in this pace. There was no plan, no schedule for activities and the stuff was comletely brune out. I ha to decide chat I soul do. First the stuff? Or the patients? Afte 2 year of practice I ha some rally intestina resulta to bot direstino- stuff and patients. Afte 4 year of practice I col noti ce more possibiliste and opportuniste. This experience in KREOUZIOS nursing house was full of challenger. Some Times full of disappointments, Others Times fruitfull and memorabile moment.

Biography:

Yunfei Yang is a Foundation year 1 Doctor, currently based in Peterborough under the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust in the UK. She has spent most of her life in the UK and recently graduated from the University of Oxford prior to taking up her FY1 training post.

Abstract:

Purpose: To audit the incidence of depression (antecedent, concurrent or new) through antidepressant use among clients in the old-age (age >65) acute admission wards in a single UK centre.

Background: Major depressive symptoms have been reported in ~20% of Alzheimer’s disease patients and up to 50% of vascular dementia patients. The cause-correlation between the two conditions is not fully clear.

Methods: We performed a retrospective descriptive study using the Rio electronic patient records (EPR) system. We analyzed admissions and transfers in between 2013-2018 for clients with a recorded diagnosis of late onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) or vascular dementia (VD). We have recorded their physical and psychiatric comorbidities at admission, the year of dementia and depression diagnosis and tracked medication changes during the course of their inpatient stay. All statistics were performed in Microsoft excel.

Results: There were 34 clients with LOAD (47% male, 53% female) and 22 clients with VD (75% male, 25% female). We found a slightly higher incidence of depression associated with patients with VD (n=12, 61%) compared to LOAD (n=18, 56%). We also comment on the temporal relation of the depression and dementia and on specific cases of rationale for the prescription of psychotropic medication.

Conclusion: Over half of our population in both cohorts had depression prior or as a new diagnosis, which conflicts with the general literature. This is partly due to limited study numbers, the use of antidepressants for other conditions (BPSD) in particular, but also the difficulty in diagnosis and limitations of the Rio system.