Bruce Miller, Ph.D., a behavioral neurologist and professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), will be the guest speaker for the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Denham Harman, M.D., Ph.D., Lectureship in Biomedical Gerontology on Friday, April 19, at noon.
The lecture, sponsored by the UNMC Department of Internal Medicine, will address frontotemporal dementia (FTD), an under-recognized and little understood group of disorders caused by progressive cell degeneration. The disorder causes shrinking of the frontal and temporal anterior lobes of the brain.
The lecture will be held in the Durham Research Center Auditorium and is open to the public. Lunch will be provided for the first 200 attendees.
Originally known as Pick’s disease, the name and classification of FTD has been a topic of discussion for more than a century. The symptoms fall into two clinical patterns that involve changes in behavior or problems with language causing impulsiveness, listlessness and inappropriate social behavior. It also can cause difficulty making or understanding speech.
Dr. Miller directs the UCSF dementia center where patients receive comprehensive clinical evaluations. His focus is dementia with special interests in brain and behavior relationships, as well as the genetic and molecular basis of disease.
Dr. Miller is principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and an NIH-funded grant for FTD. For nearly three decades, Dr. Miller has been the scientific director for the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation.
The Harman Lectureship was established in 2002 by the University of Nebraska Foundation in honor of Dr. Harman, Emeritus Millard Professor of Medicine at UNMC, who is known internationally as the father of the Free Radical Theory of Aging. He proposed the theory in 1954 and discovered the role of antioxidants (vitamins C, E and beta-carotene in fighting heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Through world-class research and patient care, UNMC generates breakthroughs that make life better for people throughout Nebraska and beyond. Its education programs train more health professionals than any other institution in the state. Learn more at unmc.edu.
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