Frontiers in Neuroscience Seminar Series

• 18 September, 15:00, Segerfalk lecture hall, BMC A10

Speaker: Professor Muireann Irish, University of Sydney

Lecture title: The many faces of motivational dysfunction in FTD

Lecture host: Alexander Santillo

About the speaker:
Professor Muireann Irish is an NHMRC Professorial Fellow at the University of Sydney, specialising in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that drive clinical heterogeneity in frontotemporal dementia. Using novel experimental paradigms, multimodal neuroimaging, plasma proteomics, and machine learning approaches, her research seeks to improve the early and accurate diagnosis of FTD, reduce prognostic uncertainty, and enhance quality of life for people affected by dementia. A major focus of her work has been to delineate alterations in reward processing, anhedonia, and rigid behaviours across dementia syndromes. In 2023, she launched the MotDem initiative, now spanning 16 countries, representing a global effort to characterise motivational and reward-processing disturbances across dementia and neuropsychiatric disorders.