POSTPONED: Special Seminar: Mapping Drivers of Pathological Cognitive Aging using PET and MRI

Postponed - Due to unavoidable circumstances, Dr. Anazodo will not be delivering the scheduled talk today at 4pm. We will endeavor to re-schedule her presentation to another date and time. Thank you for your understanding.

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Udunna Anazodo will deliver her talk Mapping Drivers of Pathological Cognitive Aging using PET and MRI on Thursday, January 7, 2021 at 4pm.

 Registration via Eventbrite 

Udunna Anazodo, PhD

PET/MRI Physicist and Principal Investigator, Lawson Health Research Institute, London, Ontario

Assistant Professor, Depts of Medical Biophysics and Clinical Neurological Sciences, Western University

Adjunct Professor, Research Centre for Studies in Aging, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Premature or pathological cognitive aging is a leading cause of disability in older adults, often diagnosed at late and intractable stages of brain disorders (Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias). It is not clear why some older adults have symptoms suggestive of pathological cognitive aging and others don’t. Decades of research in cognitive aging point to a myriad of factors (biological, environmental -physical, psychosocial, and cultural- etc.) and precipitating events (injury including ischemic infarcts) that paint a picture of the complex processes and pathways associated with the initiation and development of pathological cognitive aging. Recent evidence suggest that these factors and events ubiquitously activate a triad of complex biological pathways that act separately or together to exert numerous biological effects that could culminate in accelerated and progressive cognitive decline. Vascular dysfunction - the breakdown in vessel wall structure and function -, oxidative stress, and inflammation are ubiquitous pathways that are activated systemically in almost all tissues in response to stress, trauma, infection, or injury, and more importantly are independently linked to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

This talk will highlight emerging PET and MRI tools developed by my group to map the sequential and/or synergistic interactions of these key drivers of pathological cognitive aging in brains of live humans and animal models. And introduce ischemic heart disease post-myocardial infract as a novel disease model for mapping associations of these common drivers of tissue degeneration with known and emerging risk factors for accelerated cognitive decline – a new approach to understanding the initiation and development of pathological cognitive aging.