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Symposium Preview: Meet the ALS/FTD Plenary Speakers…Part 2

Symposium Preview: Meet the ALS/FTD Plenary Speakers…Part 2

Reading Time: 5 minutes Every year, the team works hard to build on the previous year’s success. This year we are excited to include a series of three ALS-FTD joint sessions, in collaboration with the International Society for Frontotemporal Dementias, in the programme. To give you a teaser of what is to come, we are taking a closer look at the plenary speakers in the ALS-FTD sessions at the Symposium. In this blog, we explore the topics they will be presenting and find out a little more about the speakers.

Symposium Preview: Meet the ALS/FTD Plenary Speakers…Part 1

Symposium Preview: Meet the ALS/FTD Plenary Speakers…Part 1

Reading Time: 5 minutes Every year, the team works hard to build on the previous year’s success. This year we are excited to include a series of three ALS-FTD joint sessions, in collaboration with the International Society for Frontotemporal Dementias, in the programme.

Some people with ALS, the most common form of MND, also develop a form of dementia known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD). FTD is a group of disorders where the nerve cells in two sets of lobes (frontal and temporal) in the brain are damaged. In a similar way to how motor neurones break down in MND and cause loss of function in muscles, the damage to the nerve cells in FTD causes the connections between parts of the brain to break down. As more cells become damaged and die this can lead to symptoms such as problems with memory, thinking or language, changes in mood, emotions and behaviour.

Is frontotemporal dementia different when found with MND?

Reading Time: 2 minutes Some people with MND develop an increasingly recognised form of dementia, known as frontotemporal dementia  or FTD (for more information visit http://www.ftdtalk.org/). The main symptoms of FTD include alterations in decision making, behaviour and difficulty with language. The relationship between MND and FTD is not well understood. Prof Julie Snowden and PhD student Jennie Saxon at…

More clues to the inner workings of the C9orf72 gene

Reading Time: 2 minutes Continuing the ‘gene hunting theme’ on from our last blog post on Project MinE, a recently published study has shed more light on the C9orf72 gene mutation. The C9orf72 gene mutation is the most common cause of the rare inherited form of MND (about 40% of all people with inherited MND have this mutation). Some…

Cognitive Change and MND

Reading Time: 3 minutes In addition to the muscle weakness and wasting, MND also presents with non-motor symptoms, one of the most common being cognitive change. Research has already shown that changes can occur to the nerve cells in the frontal and temporal lobe areas of the brain. These are the two areas which are responsible for controlling thinking, reasoning…