Speaker: Caroline Dallaire-Théroux, PhD (Top Left)
Paper: Revised Diagnostic Criteria for Vascular Cognitive Impairment and Dementia-The VasCog-2-WSO Criteria
About the Speaker: Caroline Dallaire-Théroux is a newly graduated neurologist and postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval, with a research focus on radiological and serum biomarkers in age-related neurocognitive disorders. She has a particular interest in vascular etiologies of cognitive decline, such as cerebral small vessel diseases. She will soon pursue further training in Cognitive Neurology at University of Calgary, specializing in cerebral amyloid angiopathy and vascular cognitive impairment.
Speaker: Jasper Crockford (Top Right)
Paper: Reproductive hormones in relation to white matter hyperintensity volumes among midlife women
Talk Description: Reproductive hormones have been implicated in risk of cerebral small vessel disease in females, yet the specific relationships between circulating reproductive hormones and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) remain underexplored. In this talk, I will present findings from Thurston et al. (2024), which examined associations between steroid hormones –estradiol, estrone, and follicle-stimulating hormone– and WMH volume in females from the MsBrain study. The goal of this presentation is to highlight potential hormonal contributors to cerebrovascular brain aging in females during mid- to late life.
About the Speaker: Jasper is a second-year Medical Science master’s student in the joint MSc/MD Leaders in Medicine program at the University of Calgary, supervised by Dr. Zahinoor Ismail. Her research focuses on how menopause-related factors –including reproductive hormones, symptom burden, and menopause hormone therapy use– are associated with biological and clinical markers of Alzheimer disease.
Speaker: Akshan Bansal (Bottom Middle)
Talk Description: The papers finds an integrated solution across biomarkers of WM integrity (white matter hyperintensities (WMH), polygenic risk scores (PRS) for mean diffusivity (MD), fractional anisotropy (FA)) obtained with T1 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), RNA methylation of Cytosine-Guanine pairs, and expressional change in gene sequences with functional test scores on STR-LTS and Stroop for a cross-sectional healthy aging cohort.
The aim of the presentation is to take attendees through a research framework utilizing neuroimaging, neuropsychological assessment, statistical data analysis, and machine learning classification (sPLS-DA).