October 9, 2009 (UPDATED October 12, 2009) — Specialists are heading to Baltimore, Maryland, for the American Neurological Association's 134th Annual Meeting. Neurologists will gather at the city's popular Inner Harbor to discuss advances in the management and treatment of diseases of the nervous system.
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| Neurologists will meet near Baltimore's Inner Harbor. |
Timothy Pedley, MD, from Columbia University in New York City, will chair the presidential symposium Monday morning. It will feature the emerging neurobiology of higher cognitive functions.
Daniel Lowenstein, MD, from the University of California–San Francisco, will cochair the session that will outline the growing understanding of how particular brain regions and network interactions give rise to cognitive functions of the brain such as perception, self-awareness, feelings, and conceptual thought.
This year's Derek Denny-Brown symposium will feature award recipients and new members of the association. Petra Kaufmann, MD, from Columbia University, and Nina Schor, MD, from the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, will lead the session.
Highlights will include a talk by David Newman-Toker, MD, on acute vestibular syndrome. Dr. Newman-Toker is from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore; he will describe how oculomotor signs are more sensitive for stroke than magnetic resonance imaging.
Keith Josephs, MD, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, will follow, speaking on temporoparietal atrophy in Alzheimer's disease. Is there an imaging signature that can help predict Alzheimer's in subjects with non-Alzheimer's clinical syndrome? Dr. Josephs suggests this may be the case and will explore the possibility Tuesday morning.
New Basic and Clinical Research
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| Dr. Samuel Pleasure is blogging for Medscape Neurology. |
Researchers will also present new basic and clinical research including 2 interesting studies in Parkinson's disease. Results from a 24-week placebo-controlled clinical trial of rivastigmine will be shown. Investigators will also unveil new levodopa results.
In epilepsy, researchers will present on eslicarbazepine acetate for refractory partial-onset seizures. In addition, more research out of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC, will be discussed when Olavo Vasconcelos, MD, presents on the neurobehavioral symptom frequencies of survivors of multiple blast explosions.
Attendees can also look forward to new simvastatin in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis results.
"There will be a number of special interest groups that will facilitate discussion of the newest data," association president Dr. Pedley told Medscape Neurology. "This will permit lively discussion of controversial areas and encourage interactions between junior and senior colleagues," he said.
"This promises to be both an enjoyable and educational time," Samuel Pleasure, MD, from the University of California–San Francisco, wrote in his blog for Medscape Neurology. Dr. Pleasure is a member of the association's scientific program advisory committee and is blogging about the meeting. "I'm very much looking forward to a week in Baltimore. I will be giving a lecture at John Hopkins University after the meeting in their neuroscience program."
The Medscape Neurology news team will be reporting onsite in Baltimore providing complete multimedia coverage of the meeting. The specialist team will be attending sessions, gathering commentary and reaction from speakers and attendees, and delivering all the latest neurology news.
The team is on Twitter (https://www.twitter.com/MedscapeNeuro, https://www.twitter.com/AllisonGandey) and will be providing regular updates from the meeting.
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Cite this: What's Hot at ANA 2009 - Medscape - Oct 09, 2009.
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