Email this pageURMC Neurology Research
Geriatric Neurology Unit & Alzheimer's Disease
Scope of Research: Basic and Clinical Research on Neuronal and Perceptual Mechanisms of Cognitive Function
Our goal is to pursue basic science research on the neuronal mechanisms of cortical information processing and clinical research on perceptual and cognitive impairments in dementing illnesses, especially Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Our current activities focus on the following areas:
•
Clinical diagnosis and sub-specialty care of dementia patients
•
Patient oriented teaching in the medical school and post-graduate
curriculum
•
Psychophysical analysis of spatial disorientation in aging and
AD
•
Behavioral assessment of navigational disorders in aging and AD
•
Single neuron neurophysiology of navigational mechanisms in behaving
monkeys
•
Human neurophysiological studies of visuospatial processing in
aging and AD
•
Single neuron neurophysiology of visual motion processing in behaving
monkeys
•
Functional imaging studies of white matter changes in aging and
AD
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Perceptual studies of attentional disorders in aging and AD
•
Perceptual studies of reading impairments in aging and AD
References
Fernandez, R., Kavcic, V., and Duffy C. J. Neurophysiological Analyses
of Low- and High- Level Visual Processing in Alzheimer’s
Disease, Neurology. 68: 2066-2076 (2007).
Page, W. K. and Duffy C. J. Cortical Neuronal Responses to Optic
Flow Are Shaped by Visual Strategies for Steering, Cerebral Cortex.
18 (4): 727-739 (2008).
Mapstone, M. Dickerson, K., and Duffy C. J. Distinct Mechanisms
of Impairment in Cognitive Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease,
Brain. 131 (6): 1618-1629 (2008).
Cushman, L., Stein, K., and Duffy, C. J. Detecting Navigational
Deficits in Cognitive Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Using
Virtual Reality, Neurology, 71: 888-895 (2008).
Kavcic, V., Ni, H., Zhu, T., Zhong, J., and Duffy, C. J. White
Matter Integrity Linked to Functional Imapirments in Agign and
Early Alzheimer’s Disease. Alzheimer’s Disease and
Other Dementias, 4: 381-389 (2008).
Dubin, M. J. and Duffy C. J. Neuronal Encoding of the Distance
Traversed by Covert Shifts of Spatial Attention. Neuroreport, 20:
49-55 (2009). NIHMS116748
Kavcic, V, Duffy, CJ: Attentional dynamics and visual perception:
mechanisms of spatial disorientation in Alzheimer’s disease.
Brain, 126; 1173-1181, 2003.
Froehler, MT, Duffy, CJ: Cortical Neurons Encoding Path and Place:
Where You Go Is
Where You Are. Science, V 295, 2462-2465, March 2002.
