The tenth inter-institutional meeting, held on April 4-6, 2018, hosted by the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute (EMBI) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), was attended by approximately 150 research scientists from each of the four McKnight Brain Institutes.
The trustees of the McKnight Brain Research Foundation (MBRF), Directors of the Brain Institutes and their respective research teams from the EMBIs at the UAB, the University of Arizona, the University of Florida and the University of Miami gathered to discuss the research in progress and the collaboration between and among the scientists on the problems of learning and memory in the aging with emphasis on cognitive health, prevention and treatment of cognitive decline and memory loss. Read the program here
Dr. Ronald Lazar, Director of the EMBI at UAB and the Evelyn F. McKnight Chair of Learning and Memory in Aging at the UAB acted as the local host and provided oversight for all the arrangements for this important and successful meeting.
In addition to the scientific program, the highlights of the meeting were the two keynote speakers.
Dr. Steve Horvath, Professor, Human Genomics and Biostatistics at the David Gelfen School of Medicine at the University of California gave a very interesting talk on “Epigenetic Clock Analysis of Cognitive Aging”. Dr. Madhav Thambisetty, trustee of the MBRF, Investigator and Chief, Unit of Clinical and Translational Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging gave an excellent talk focused “Toward New Cures for Alzheimer’s Disease”. The following areas for potential further or new collaboration were identified by focus groups in meetings in advance of the scientific program and were reported upon during the scientific session.
- Perirhinal Cortex
- Vascular Risk factors
- Inflammation/Blood Brain Barrier
- Exercise
- Neuroimaging Brain Aging registy
- Stress
- Cerebral Blood Flow
- Epigenetics and emerging areas in Molecular Profiling
- Sleep
- Cognative Training and Enhancement
- McKnight Brain Aging Registry
The purpose of the inter-institutional meetings is to foster the necessary collaboration to achieve successful outcomes in the understanding of cognitive aging and possible treatments of cognitive loss and decline. The inter-institutional meetings are held at least annually, rotating among each of the four McKnight Brain Institutes. The next meeting will be held April 10-12, 2019 at the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida.
Because much of the information contained in each of the scientific sessions is of a proprietary and preliminary nature, not all the power point slides accompanying each presentation are published. Anyone wishing to obtain information personally may wish to contact the individual investigator. The contact information for each investigator is listed in the roster for each respective institution in the back of the program.