NEWS

The last few months has seen ASSBI engage internationally, with some exciting opportunities developing as a result. The Global Neuropsychology Congress, which was co-hosted by ASSBI, the Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology (FESN), the International Neuropsychological Society (INS), and the Latin American Society of Neuropsychology (SLAN), took place in Porto in July. It was a wonderful and truly global conference, with more than 1000 attendees from over 50 countries and a prominent focus on the cross-cultural relevance and accessibility of assessments and interventions for people with brain conditions around the world. Australia was the country with the second highest number of registrants. I was proud to see the wide range and high quality of presentations from ASSBI members, including our ASSBI-sponsored symposium on co-design chaired by Jennie Ponsford with presenters Nicci Grace, Jacinta Douglas, Jessica Trevena-Peters and Jill Hwang. Special thanks to co-convenor Vicki Anderson (who we’ll claim as ASSBI’s!) who worked incredibly hard over many years to organise a massive and successful event; and to Skye McDonald and Jennie Ponsford, our ASSBI representatives on the program committee and local organising committee respectively.  Whilst in Porto, the 4 host societies, including ASSBI, met with a representative from the World Health Organization to discuss potential opportunities for engagement with relevant WHO initiatives. At the conference close, I was delighted to present the ASSBI Global Ambassador Award to Skye McDonald. Congratulations once again Skye!

While in Portugal, several members of the ASSBI executive committee also met with colleagues from India, to explore ways in which we can make ASSBI’s resources, webinars, conferences and other training opportunities available at minimal or no cost to clinicians and researchers in India and other low-and-middle-income countries. We are continuing to engage with them to develop these initiatives and more. There is much we can learn from our colleagues in low-and-middle-income countries about their creative and innovative efforts to deliver services in resource-constrained contexts with a diverse range of people with unmet support needs. This is an exciting chapter for ASSBI; we are keen to share our wealth of resources and opportunities with countries where access to these may be difficult. Stay tuned for announcements on this.

Plans are shaping up well for the 2025 7^th Pacific Rim conference in Brisbane from 2^nd-5th July, where ASSBI will partner with INS and the APS College of Clinical Neuropsychologists (CCN) to deliver a fabulous and vibrant program. The team of convenors includes representatives from each of the three organisations: thank you to Jenny Fleming (ASSBI), Vince Oxenham & Jody Kamminga (CCN) and Kerryn Pike (INS) for stepping up and bringing such enthusiasm and purpose to this voluntary role. We hope to see everyone there for what promises to be another fantastic conference and chance to connect with our clinician, researcher, student and lived experience community members, both local and international.

Dana Wong, President, ASSBI

WORDS FROM OUR PRESIDENT

I am still thrumming with ideas, memories, reflections and pride after ASSBI’s annual conference early in May in Sydney. What a fabulous showcase of the outstanding multidisciplinary research and practice being done by ASSBI members – we do meaningful, person-centred, evidence-based and innovative work to make lives better for people living with brain conditions. All the platform and datablitz presentations, posters, how-to sessions, lived experience panel, keynote addresses and workshops were of the highest quality and truly engaging. The conference venue and catering were also top notch which enhanced the experience deliciously. I’m still thinking about that sashimi and those dumplings at the welcome reception! Congratulations to Elise Bogart and the organising committee, the student team led by Nicole Feast, and of course Margaret and Matt Eagers, for putting together such a fantastic conference. Thank you also to everyone who has sent lovely messages about the impact of the conference for them via email and social media. It’s such a wonderful community we have. I look forward to reading the full conference report in the Professional Development section of this newsletter.

During the conference, we had the opportunity to meet with several members of our new ASSBI lived experience sub-committee. We spoke about the role of this sub-committee, which will be to develop and expand ASSBI’s activities in ways that are driven by people with lived experience of brain conditions. There are many exciting opportunities here, including providing accessible information and resources about the latest research to people with lived experience whose lives can benefit from that research. Our first steps will be to co-develop a Terms of Reference document for the lived experience committee, which will then guide the priorities and next step for the coming year and beyond.

ASSBI’s 2023 Annual Report was distributed at our recent AGM and is a surprisingly good read! At the AGM we spoke about ways to expand our membership, particularly early career clinicians and researchers. Stay tuned for developments and initiatives around that. We are also hoping to recruit executive committee members from outside Australia. It was great to see many of our excellent New Zealand colleagues at the ASSBI conference and discuss the synergies between the work we are doing. 

The program for the Global Neuropsychology Congress in Porto in July (for which ASSBI is a co-host) has been announced. It looks excellent and features numerous presenters from our ASSBI community. Can’t wait! I’m also looking forward to our 2025 7^th Pacific Rim conference in Brisbane – it has just been confirmed that the APS College of Clinical Neuropsychologists will be partnering with ASSBI and INS for this conference. We are excited to have the opportunity to work together again and put together what will undoubtedly be another excellent conference reflecting the shared focus of all three organisations on optimising research and practice in neuropsychology and brain conditions across the lifespan.

Dana Wong, President, ASSBI

Happy not-so-new year to all in our ASSBI community! I am writing this from New York, where I have just found out that the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) have confirmed that their mid-year meeting in 2025 will be co-hosted with ASSBI and held in Brisbane. This is a very exciting next step in our longstanding alliance with INS over several successful mid-year meetings. The most recent of these was in 2021, when the conference which was planned to be in Melbourne moved online at the last minute (co-convenors Kerryn Pike, Travis Wearne and I together with conference organisers Margaret and Matt Eagers are still recovering!) It will be wonderful to have the opportunity to meet in person this time.

This year’s ASSBI conference convenor Elise Bogart (Elbourn) and the program committee have put together a fabulous program – don’t miss it in Sydney from 2-4 May 2024 at the Four Seasons Hotel. Don’t forget to book accommodation at the conference hotel while the discounted rate is still available. Early bird registration is also great value for money!

A warm welcome to our new national student coordinator, Nicole Feast (a clinical neuropsychologist who is doing a PhD at the University of Western Australia) – and thank you so much to our outgoing student coordinator Aishani Desai, who thankfully is staying on the ASSBI committee as part of our social media team. Nicole has gone straight to work helping plan a great program of student events and initiatives at both the ASSBI conference in Sydney and the Global Neuropsychology Congress in Porto from 3-5 July this year (https://www.globalneuropsychology.org), which is jointly hosted by ASSBI, INS, FESN and SLAN. There has been a lot of interest from Australian researchers, clinicians, and students for the Porto conference – I can’t wait!

ASSBI is also currently reviewing ways in which we can better support engagement in our conferences, webinars and resources from people from low- and middle-income countries. We are very keen to provide more affordable opportunities to access ASSBI events and activities and expand our reach internationally. I’m looking forward to progressing this and other ASSBI initiatives with the hard-working executive committee in 2024.

Dana Wong, President, ASSBI

As the year draws to a close (oddly, since it was January only a couple of months ago), it is an opportunity to reflect on the year that’s now behind us. It has been a fairly chaotic one in the world of health services and systems, as the widespread consequences of the pandemic have revealed themselves in both expected and unexpected ways. During the pandemic, uncertainty about the future had a focused, crisis quality to it. That has now given way to uncertainty about the way in which our health, disability, social and education systems now operate. In these stormy seas, clarity about our values and guiding principles is all the more important for steering the ship.

One of the things I most love about ASSBI is that we are a community unswervingly guided by our values. In the recent revamp of our website (which is worth checking out – assbi.com.au), our home page now proudly states our Purpose, which is to improve the lives of people with conditions impacting the brain and their support networks; our Vision, to support maintenance and innovations in knowledge and practice to provide the best possible treatment and care; and our Mission, to support professional development, cross-disciplinary engagement, and strengthen the voice of lived experience. I believe our activities throughout 2023 have enacted these intentions, from the fabulous Darwin conference to our ever-growing suite of evidence-based resources, our BRAINSPaN community of practice, and developing plans for our lived experience sub-committee.

Our recent survey of 2023 conference attendees was informative in guiding some of the intentions we now have for 2024.  A majority of the attendees had been loyal attendees of ASSBI conferences for many years, which is wonderful, but we had fewer attendees in their early career. We are now brainstorming ways to encourage engagement with early career clinicians and researchers, and would love to hear your ideas about this. We hope to see plenty of you at the 2024 ASSBI Conference, to be held in Sydney from 2-4 May 2024 at the Four Seasons Hotel. The program is shaping up beautifully, including a reasonably priced conference dinner with DJ and dancefloor, which is always a personal highlight!

Plans for the Global Neuropsychology Congress in Porto, Portugal in mid-2024 (https://www.globalneuropsychology.org), which is jointly hosted by ASSBI, INS, FESN and SLAN, are also progressing well. There will be an excellent program of keynote and invited speakers, symposia and roundtables on a range of contemporary topics. Keep your eye out for the call for abstracts for oral and poster presentations, coming any day now.

I hope that you all have a relaxing festive season enjoying delicious food with family and friends. Let’s hope that we all start 2024 restored and ready for whatever the future brings.

Things have been busy at ASSBI, as usual. Planning is full steam ahead for the 2024 ASSBI Conference, to be held in Sydney from 2-4 May 2024 at the Four Seasons Hotel. Block out your calendars!

ASSBI are also partnering with several organisations including the Federation of European Societies of Neuropsychology (FESN), the International Neuropsychological Society (INS), and the Sociedad Latinoamericana de Neuropsicologia (SLAN), to host the Global Neuropsychology Congress from 3-5 July 2024 in beautiful Porto, Portugal. This congress will be an international meeting of minds, bringing together members of ASSBI, FESN, INS, and SLAN, as well as many other friends and colleagues from around the world. The congress will incorporate research and clinical practice topics relevant to neuropsychology and related fields, to ensure that everyone in our global community benefits from the very best neuropsychological science and practice.  See more in our Newsletter

I am delighted to be writing my very first “Words from our President”, having taken the reins from Prof Olivier Piguet at ASSBI’s AGM at the conference in Darwin on 5 May 2023. I feel incredibly honoured to lead such a vibrant, forward-thinking, impactful and inclusive organisation whose members care so deeply about working together to improve the lives of people living with brain conditions. ASSBI’s unique strength is its multidisciplinary, transdiagnostic scope, which allows rich exchange of knowledge and ideas amongst clinicians, researchers, students, policy makers, and people with lived experience of conditions affecting the brain.

I have been a member of ASSBI since I was a bright-eyed clinical neuropsychology student in the early 2000s. I have always loved ASSBI conferences and events, for both the high-quality, clinically meaningful content, and the top-notch social program which reliably features dance floor delights! This was never truer than in Darwin, at ASSBI’s first in-person/hybrid conference since 2019. I am still buzzing from the fun of it all. A full conference report will follow in the next newsletter, but for now – thank you and congratulations to Barbra Zupan and Lizzie Beadle for their superb job as convenors, the student team led by Aishani Desai for all of their crucial contributions, all our keynote speakers and presenters who beautifully showcased the diverse and important work that is happening in our field, and of course the inimitable Margaret and Matt Eagers, without whom we really would all flounder.

I’m also proud of ASSBI’s focus on supporting students through our student teams and ambassadors, events, awards, and other initiatives. I spent several years as the Student Liaison Officer on the ASSBI executive committee, which was a very rewarding role, and indeed quite easy given the amazing competence and innovative spirit of our student team and members. The next generation of clinicians and researchers in the brain impairment field are truly remarkable.

I would like to give an enormous thank you to Olivier Piguet for all his hard work during his two years as President. Olivier had the tough gig of leading ASSBI through the thick of the pandemic, and consequently gave his two Presidential Addresses online rather than in-person, thereby missing the rewards of a live audience. He was nevertheless unflappable, capable, and determined. He was instrumental in developing ASSBI’s 5-year strategic plan and ensuring our plans for the first year were successfully implemented. It has also been wonderful to have a dementia expert at the helm of ASSBI, which has been important for ensuring our scope includes all brain conditions, not just brain injury.

Enormous thanks must go to Emeritus Professor Robyn Tate, who is stepping down from the ASSBI committee as part of her attempts to “retire”. Robyn has been instrumental to ASSBI right from the beginning, and in fact was part of the birth of ASSBI in 1976, at the same time as I was busy being born. It is hard to put into words the phenomenal contributions that Robyn has made to ASSBI and to our field broadly. She has such a rigorous, careful, considered approach to everything she puts her mind to. Special thanks to you Robyn for all you have given, and for asking me to step into your shoes as President.

Congratulations also to our new President-Elect, A/Prof Barbra Zupan. In line with our aim to ensure multidisciplinary engagement with ASSBI goes from strength to strength, it will be wonderful to have a speech pathologist at the helm to give everyone a break from us neuropsychologists! Barbra is very active, positive, and hard-working and will undoubtedly be a fantastic President when she takes over in 2025.

In the second year of ASSBI’s 5-year strategic plan, there is a strong focus on growing and re-imagining the ways in which ASSBI engages with people with lived experience. This is a really important task and one which is very close all our hearts. The executive committee would welcome all your ideas about this, and how ASSBI can best complement the work of other organisations focused on advocacy for people living with brain conditions.

It'll be a busy couple of years ahead. It’s just as well we have such a strong committee and membership to share the work – and have some fun along the way.

WORDS FROM OUR PRESIDENT

Short story: A 10-year-old boy falls off his bike. By all accounts, his fall is mild. Following this incident, however, he starts experiencing seizures which become increasingly frequent, often several times a day. These seizures cannot be controlled by medications, and the boy becomes increasingly incapacitated, dropping out of school and later unable to hold a job. The boy’s name was Henry Molaison, or HM as he became to be better known.

Seventy years ago - on the 1^st of September 1953 - at the age of 27, Henry underwent a pioneering brain operation to remove what was thought to be the origin of his seizures. William Scoville removed Henry’s both hippocampi. As neurosurgeons often say, “the operation was a success, the patient survived”. Indeed, Henry did survive but also became densely amnesic, unable to remember any new information for more than a few second unless it was continuously rehearsed. Scoville, together with Brenda Milner reported the case of Henry in 1957 in a seminal article published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Henry’s unfortunate outcome was a critical milestone in our understanding of the biological bases of human cognition. Scoville and Milner’s article, cited nearly 10,000 times, demonstrated the importance of the hippocampus to episodic memory functions, and has led to over 13,000 scientific articles on the topic of episodic memory since 1968! HM himself participated in many of these studies, first with Brenda Milner in Montreal, then with Suzanne Corkin at MIT, the last time in 2006, only a couple of years before he passed away¹. Remarkably, seventy years later, the mechanisms by which new memories are organised, laid down and later retrieved are still incompletely understood. Similarly, although the role of the hippocampus in memory is not under debate, its exact functions still are, as are the contributions of other brain regions towards this function.

Fascination for memory by the scientific and clinical community is not entirely surprising. Memory is a wonderful thing! In addition to allowing us to reminisce about the past, it is intimately linked to our survival. It allows us to navigate the world, solve problems and acquire knowledge, create social networks and have meaningful relationships. It is also linked to creativity, allowing us to project ourselves in the future, and therefore plan future actions that will contribute to our quality of life. But what this story also demonstrates is the importance of single-case experiments in understanding human behaviour. Although a lot is being said about experimental design, power calculation and sample size, many breakthroughs have come about from careful examinations of single patients. This highlights the importance for clinicians to remain curious: you never know where your next patient will lead to.

I am telling you all this because I have been reminiscing about my tenure as President of ASSBI. Indeed, I am sad to announce that this will be my last ‘words from the President’ as I will be handing over the reins of the Presidency to Dana Wong at the Annual General Meeting in May. In spite of the challenging times, this has been a privilege to serve ASSBI during these past two years. I want to thank the members of the Executive Committee for helping me during this time and for their continuing contribution to making ASSBI such a wonderful and welcoming association. I also want to thank Margaret Eagers for her help and support during that time. As I bid you farewell, fear not: I will still be around for the foreseeable future and I hope to see many of you in Darwin at the ASSBI Annual Conference.

Until next time, stay well and stay safe.
Olivier Piguet, President, ASSBI
¹ Corkin S. (2013). Permanent present tense. The man with no memory and what he taught the world. Allen Lane.

WORDS FROM OUR PRESIDENT

 As many of you know, I work in the dementia space, running FRONTIER, the clinical research group on frontotemporal dementia and related younger-onset dementias at the Brain and Mind Centre of the University of Sydney. We see primarily people who exhibit changes in behaviour, personality and cognition in their 40s or 50s. Indeed, dementia is not just a disease of old age with 10% of individuals living with dementia being younger than 65 years. Not surprisingly, dementia in that age group is associated with challenges that are different to a dementia diagnosis later in life, affecting families in their working life, and often with young children. 

I have just returned from the International Conference on Frontotemporal Dementias, which was held in Lille, in Northern France in early November. The excitement among delegates and speakers of the conference was palpable. For many – myself included – it was their first international conference since 2019. Being able to reconnect with friends and colleagues face to face was a real treat. Many new projects and international collaborations were discussed during the few days of the conference! This enthusiasm demonstrates the importance of direct contact in social interactions and the limitations of virtual meetings. Indeed, many of these new ideas were hatched on the sideline of the program, either in between sessions or during the many social events that took place during the week.

Aside from this conference, it has also been exciting to see the progress made in the field of pharmacological treatments for dementia. Results from a clinical trial for Alzheimer’s disease were recently reported. The drug, Lecanemab, is a monoclonal antibody that has been demonstrated to reduce the amount of beta-Amyloid in the brain, one of the two toxic proteins involved in Alzheimer’s disease. Whilst definite evidence for a clinical impact of the drug is still pending, this new drug is promising and gives hope to thousands of people living with the most common form of dementia around the world.

In the field of frontotemporal dementia, the field is not as advanced, in part because of the multiple causes and different biological mechanisms involved in this type of dementia. Nevertheless, at the Lille conference, no fewer than 9 pharmaceutical companies presented preliminary data or outlined proposals for clinical trials to test novel compounds in frontotemporal dementia. When we organised the last conference on frontotemporal dementia in Sydney in 2018 (the 2020 meeting was cancelled because of COVID), only one pharmaceutical company was present. In addition, this company was focusing on symptom management, rather than on disease-modifying treatment. 

The progress made in the past four years in this field has been truly outstanding and is indicating that real changes are on the horizon for the 400,000 people living with dementia in Australia and their families, although treatments are still likely some years away. Until then, we need to make sure that effort continues towards the development of appropriate services, support, and infrastructures that are still lacking.

As this is the last ‘words from the President’ for 2022, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2023.

Until next time, stay well and stay safe.
Olivier Piguet, President, ASSBI