Cross-Cutting

Geriatric Rehabilitation

Neurodegenerative Disease (e.g. MS, Parkinson's disease)

Special Symposium

SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM: Personalized Connectome Profiling for Rehabilitation Patients with Neural Injury and Neurodegenerative Disorder (603045)

Presenter(s)

• 

  Andrei Irimia, PhD

  ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GERONTOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
  UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
  LOS ANGELES, California

Moderator(s)

• 

  Patricia Heyn, PhD, FGSA, FACRM

  Associate Professor
  University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
  Aurora, Colorado

Panelist(s)

• 

  Emily Nalder, PhD, BOccThy(Hons)

  Assistant professor (tenure stream)
  University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine
  Toronto, Ontario

The rehabilitation of patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, and stroke poses substantial challenges due to these conditions’ heterogeneous patterns of neural degradation. This special symposium has the goal to customize therapies based on patient-specific disability profiles. Professionals can benefit from mapping neural/cognitive deficits onto individualized pattern of brain wiring disruptions. Recent progress on integrating structural and diffusion MRI with connectome mapping techniques affords us the unique opportunity to conceptualize neural disability as a dynamic process of brain connectivity alterations whose trajectory can be modified with rehabilitation with the to optimize recovery.

Learning Objectives:

• Conceptualize rehabilitation as the process of targeting specific brain circuitry to improve function
• Characterize the connectome degradation patterns of older adults suffering from dementia and brain injury
• Understand how personalized mapping of neurological patients' brain wiring may help to alleviate their deficits
• Identify strategies whereby neuroimaging of neural connectivity can be leveraged to optimize recovery
• Understand how to apply and expand current rehabilitation practices