Background: Eye movements reveal neurodegenerative disease processes due to overlap between oculomotor circuitry and disease-affected areas. Characterizing oculomotor behaviour in context of cognitive function may enhance disease diagnosis and monitoring. We therefore aimed to quantify cognitive impairment in neurodegenerative disease using saccade behaviour and neuropsychology. Methods: The Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative recruited individuals with neurodegenerative disease: one of Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, or cerebrovascular disease. Patients (n=450, age 40-87) and healthy controls (n=149, age 42-87) completed a randomly interleaved pro- and anti-saccade task (IPAST) while their eyes were tracked. We explored the relationships of saccade parameters (e.g. task errors, reaction times) to one another and to cognitive domain-specific neuropsychological test scores (e.g. executive function, memory). Results: Task performance worsened with cognitive impairment across multiple diseases. Subsets of saccade parameters were interrelated and also differentially related to neuropsychology-based cognitive domain scores (e.g. antisaccade errors and reaction time associated with executive function). Conclusions: IPAST detects global cognitive impairment across neurodegenerative diseases. Subsets of parameters associate with one another, suggesting disparate underlying circuitry, and with different cognitive domains. This may have implications for use of IPAST as a cognitive screening tool in neurodegenerative disease.

Because individuals develop dementia as a manifestation of neurodegenerative or neurovascular disorder, there is a need to develop reliable approaches to their identification. We are undertaking an observational study (Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative [ONDRI]) that includes genomics, neuroimaging, and assessments of cognition as well as language, speech, gait, retinal imaging, and eye tracking. Disorders studied include Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and vascular cognitive impairment. Data from ONDRI will be collected into the Brain-CODE database to facilitate correlative analysis. ONDRI will provide a repertoire of endophenotyped individuals that will be a unique, publicly available resource.

Retrograde amnesia was assessed in demented and non-demented Parkinson’s patients using a test of remote memory spanning the years from 1920-1979. Results indicated that the demented patients 1) scored significantly below normal controls and 2) had equal impairment for all time periods. This pattern was like that seen in other dementing illnesses (i.e., Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s diseases), but different from that in amnesic disorders, such as Korsakoff s syndrome. The data, therefore, suggest qualitative differences in pattern of remote memory loss between the dementias and amnesic syndromes.

Background : A definitive diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS), as distinct from a clinically isolated syndrome, requires one of two conditions: a second clinical attack or particular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings as defined by the McDonald criteria. MRI is also important after a diagnosis is made as a means of monitoring subclinical disease activity. While a standardized protocol for diagnostic and follow-up MRI has been developed by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centres, acceptance and implementation in Canada have been suboptimal. Methods : To improve diagnosis, monitoring, and management of a clinically isolated syndrome and MS, a Canadian expert panel created consensus recommendations about the appropriate application of the 2010 McDonald criteria in routine practice, strategies to improve adherence to the standardized Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centres MRI protocol, and methods for ensuring effective communication among health care practitioners, in particular referring physicians, neurologists, and radiologists. Results : This article presents eight consensus statements developed by the expert panel, along with the rationale underlying the recommendations and commentaries on how to prioritize resource use within the Canadian healthcare system. Conclusions : The expert panel calls on neurologists and radiologists in Canada to incorporate the McDonald criteria, the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centres MRI protocol, and other guidance given in this consensus presentation into their practices. By improving communication and general awareness of best practices for MRI use in MS diagnosis and monitoring, we can improve patient care across Canada by providing timely diagnosis, informed management decisions, and better continuity of care.

The ‘religious right’ came to prominence in the US during the late 1970s by campaigning on ‘social issues’ and encouraging many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians to get involved in politics. However, the fact that it clashed with ‘born again’ President Jimmy Carter over tax breaks for religious schools believed to be discriminatory, together with its illiberal stances on many issues, meant that it was characterized as an extremist movement. I argue that this assessment is oversimplified. First, many Christian schools were not racially discriminatory, and their defenders resented being labelled as racists. Secondly, few historians have recognized that the Christians involved in the religious right were among the most secularized of their kind. The religious right was often mistakenly categorized alongside earlier American Christian political movements that had displayed extremist and anti-democratic tendencies. The Carter administration's records and oft-ignored religious right ephemeral literature partly substantiate the movement's contention that it was defensive rather than theocratic in nature. One of my conclusions is that more attention must be paid to the subtle nuances of the political and theological views of religious right leaders, because the confusion surrounding the religious right is partly a function of its leaders harbouring internally inconsistent views.

As this conference has attested to, cosmology is a rapidly maturing field, currently experiencing a very healthy and vigorous confrontation between theory and experiment. This rapid progress in many different areas of cosmology has not removed the longstanding interest in measuring many of the fundamental cosmological parameters - rather, the increasingly detailed predictions of current theory highlight the critical importance of independently, accurately measuring the cosmological parameters which define the basic model for the dynamical evolution of the Universe. I present here the final results of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project to measure the Hubble constant, summarizing our method, the results and the uncertainties. The Key Project results are based on a Cepheid calibration of several secondary distance methods applied over the range of about 60 to 400 Mpc. Based on the Key Project Cepheid calibration and its application to five secondary methods (type Ia supernovae, the Tully-Fisher relation, surface brightness fluctuations, type II supernovae, and the fundamental plane for elliptical galaxies), a combined value of H0 = 72 ± 8 km/sec/Mpc is obtained. Comparing to current estimates of the ages of Galactic globular clusters, an age conflict is avoided for this high a value of H0 if we live in a Λ-dominated (or other form of dark energy) universe.

Abnormalities during a smooth pursuit eye movement task (SPEM) are common in schizophrenic patients and their relatives. This study assessed various components of SPEM performance in first-degree unaffected relatives of schizophrenic patients. One hundred individuals with schizophrenia, 137 unaffected first-degree relatives, and 69 normal controls completed a 16.7°/s SPEM task. Smooth pursuit gain, catch-up saccades (CUS), large anticipatory saccades, and leading saccades (LS) were identified. Groups were compared with parametric and admixture analyses. Schizophrenic patients performed more poorly than unaffected relatives and normals on gain, CUS, and LS. Unaffected relatives were more frequently impaired than normals only on gain and LS. Relatives of childhood-onset and adult-onset probands had similar impairments. Gain and frequency of leading saccades may be genetic endophenotypes in childhood-onset and adult-onset schizophrenia.

Scholars of Middle Eastern studies in the last decade often were preoccupied with two major problems. First, the democratization that has spread over most of the globe seems to have missed the Middle East. Second, there appears to be a growing gap between international relations and comparative politics theory, on the one hand, and Middle East studies, on the other. In seeking to explain why, some point to the highly politicized scholarship that can still be found in Middle East studies. Others argue that the theorists simply have not tried hard enough to fit the special nature of the Middle East into their theoretical models, or that Middle Eastern scholars have not tried hard enough to deal with theory. Two of the three books under review, by Hansen and Heydemann, do a great deal to narrow the gap between theory and reality in the Middle East. The book by Niblock is an example of the kind of highly politicized scholarship that is still found too often in Middle Eastern studies.