Date: February 26, 2025
Time: 60 minutes, 9–10 AM PST | 12–1 PM EST | 6–7 PM CET
To see what time this is in your time zone, please click here.
Welcome to the inaugural ISFTD Webinar, Hot Topic, organized by the ISFTD communication and Early- and Mid-Career Researchers committees. This exciting webinar highlights the work of esteemed experts and promising early- and mid-career researchers in the FTD field. This edition delves into the fascinating clinical syndrome associated with right anterior temporal atrophy. Recent years have seen significant advances in its diagnosis, with ongoing efforts to unravel its complexities across clinical, genetic, and pathological domains. Join us to explore the latest insights and emerging research shaping our understanding of this syndrome.
Program
Moderators: Elise Marsan, US and Kyrana Tsapkini, US
Right Temporal Variant FTD: Towards Improved Clinical Recognition – Yolande Pijnenburg, NL
Multimodal Semantic Knowledge of Emotions in Semantic Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia – Maxime Montembeault, CA (Early/Mid Career Researcher)
Mapping Emotions in the Semantic Behavioral Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia – Virginia Sturm, US (Early/Mid Career Researcher)
Elise Marsan, US
Yolande Pijnenburg, NL
Maxime Montembeault, CA
Virginia Sturm, US
Elisa Marsan
Dr. Elise Marsan obtained her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience from the Paris Brain Institute, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship investigating neuronal and glial pathology in FTD-GRN. Since 2023, she has been a tenure-track investigator at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, where she leads the Molecular Pathology Unit at the Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias. Her work explores the molecular mechanisms driving neuronal and non-neuronal pathology in TDP-43 proteinopathies such as Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and LATE, utilizing human brain tissue and multicellular organoids. Dr. Marsan has chaired the ISFTD EMCR committee for two years and now leads its webinar committee.
Yolande Pijnenburg
Prof. Yolande Pijnenburg is a behavioural neurologist. She is the medical director of the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. She is also in the board of directors of the Amsterdam Neuroscience research institute. Her main focus of research are the clinical manifestations of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and biomarkers for frontotemporal dementia. She was involved in key papers on PCA and bvAD. Since 10 years she runs a neuropsychiatric clinic together with a psychiatrist where they conduct a longitudinal study called the Social Brain Project in order to investigate tools to differentiate between bvFTD, bvAD and primary psychiatric disorders. She is the supervisor of 17 PhD students and 4 post doc researchers. She is the chair of the Dutch FTD experts group, and together with Dr. Simon Ducharme she leads the Neuropsychiatric International Consortium for Frontotemporal Dementia.
Maxime Montembeault
Dr. Maxime Montembeault is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and researcher at the Douglas Research Centre. He received a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology at Université de Montréal in 2018 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Memory & Aging Center, University of California in San Francisco in 2022. His team uses digital cognitive markers and multimodal neuroimaging to investigate linguistic and socio-emotional changes and their brain correlates in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. Twitter: @maxmontembeault
Virginia Sturm
Virginia Sturm, PhD is a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Sturm, an affective neuroscientist and neuropsychologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and Global Brain Health Institute, studies emotions, empathy, and social behavior in neurodegenerative disorders and neurodevelopmental conditions. Twitter: @brainsturming