Abstract

BNPA Committee member, Christopher Butler is Academic Clinical Lecturer in Neurology at the University of Oxford. His research interests centre on mechanisms of human memory and their disruption in brain disease, particularly epilepsy. He trained in medicine at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh and obtained his PhD for work conducted on the syndrome of Transient Epileptic Amnesia under the supervision of Adam Zeman. Together with Adam Zeman, he helps to coordinate the nationwide TIME (The Impairment of Memory in Epilepsy) Project. He runs a multidisciplinary Cognitive Disorders Clinic at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Over the last decade, there have been major advances in our understanding of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) syndromes. In this update, I will briefly review research findings relating to clinical assessment and diagnosis, neuroimaging, histopathology, genetics and treatment of behavioural variant FTD. The emphasis will be on research that has implications for the clinical practice of neurologists and psychiatrists.