Behavioral Neurology Training to Establish Research and Clinical Care in Alzheimer`s Disease and Related Disorders in Turkey.

Alzheimer`s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in older adults and there are currently no effective treatments. Although AD most commonly presents as an amnestic phenotype, in some cases language impairment is the salient symptom. Aphasic syndromes caused by neurodegenerative disease are known as Primary Progressive Aphasias (PPA), a diagnosis first established and characterized by the training mentor on this application: Marsel Mesulam. The sponsoring group for this project, all faculty at the Northwestern University Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer`s Disease Center (CNADC), have over 75 years of combined experience in PPA research. Currently the CNADC is conducting a longitudinal investigation with the largest PPA cohort in the world, and the current proposal takes advantage of this infrastructure. The proposed project will provide both clinical and research training in the general area of behavioral neurology, with an emphasis on assessment of language function in neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the growing significance of AD there are few behavioural neurology clinics in Turkey, and none of them specialize in the assessment of language impairment. Given the fact that 60-85% of AD patients suffer from language impairments during the course of the disease, including a subset with the PPA phenotype, training in language assessment will be extremely useful for my career as a clinician/researcher.