Acknowledgements
I would like first, and foremost, to acknowledge the intellectual debt I owe to a number of teachers and colleagues who have encouraged my interest in cognitive dysfunction over three decades. Whilst in Oxford, I was fortunate to work with John and Susan Oxbury, who provided an environment in which an interest in neuropsychology was encouraged. The presence of John Marshall and Freda Newcombe in the University Department of Neurology was also a seminal influence. This milieu, which was sadly unique in British neurology at the time, also nurtured the interests of my friends and contemporaries Christopher Ward and Harvey Sagar. At that time I also began a fruitful collaboration with Elaine Funnell, who was working at Birkbeck College. Charles Warlow did much to help by co-supervising my MD project on transient global amnesia when he was Clinical Reader in Oxford, and by implanting the idea of this book on a subsequent visit to Edinburgh.
The Medical Research Council kindly sponsored a fellowship year spent studying neuropsychology at the Alzheimer Disease Research Center in the University of California, San Diego. Whilst I was there, Nelson Butters and David Salmon were particularly influential. It was this year, more than any other, that decided the direction of my future research interests. Nelson, who sadly died of motor neuron disease a few years after my fellowship year, was an inspiration and provided honorary membership of the North American neuropsychology community.
After moving to Cambridge, I was extremely fortunate to work closely with a group of outstanding clinical and experimental neuropsychologists. Karalyn Patterson was a particularly important guiding light, and together we established an active research programme investigating aspects of language and memory in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and the frontotemporal dementias which has been going strong for 15 years. Kim Graham graduated from being our first PhD student to postdoctoral fellow and is now a senior scientist and joint coordinator of the group based at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (CBU). Over the years, I have also benefited enormously from collaborations with Alan Baddeley, German Berrios, Roz McCarthy, Trevor Robbins, Barbara Sahakian, Ian Robertson, and Barbara Wilson. John Xuereb started my neuropathology education which was continued in the beautiful city of Sydney by Glenda Halliday and Jillian Kril. I have been blessed by having a succession of excellent clinical research fellows, many of whom have moved to clinical and academic positions around the world including John Greene, Tom Esmonde, Peter Garrard, Richard Perry, Adam Zeman, Tom Bak, Cath Mummery, Clare Galton, Siân Thompson, Shibley Rahman, Peter Nestor, Rhys Davies, Andrew Graham, Chris Kipps, Jonathan Knibb, Paul McMonagle, and George Pengas. We also benefited from the overseas visitors who have contributed to the research effort, notably Pavagada Mathuranath, Ellajosyula Ratnavalli, Suvarna Alladi, Facundo Manes, Joseph Spatt, Manabu Ikeda, and Adrian Ivanoiu. Tim Rogers, Matt Lambon-Ralph, Sasha Bozeat, Anna Adlam, and Naida Graham have all been long-term colleagues at the MRC unit.
The memory clinic was founded in 1990 with German Berrios and provided the basic fuel—a plentiful supply of patients with cognitive disorders for our studies. Our first clinical neuropsychologist, Kristin Breen, sadly passed away at a tragically young age. Since then we had the pleasure of working with Diana Caine, Aidan Jones, and Narinder Kapur. Jerry Brown moved to Cambridge and added a valuable genetic dimension to the clinic. The increasing number of patients under follow-up during the 1990s persuaded us to clone the concept of a multidisciplinary cognitive clinic and in 1997 we started an Early Onset Dementia Clinic, largely for follow-up of patients with frontotemporal dementia and their carers. Sinclair Lough brought expertise in clinical psychology to this clinic and, after his move to Dorset, we were fortunate in persuading Vanessa Garfoot to participate in the clinic. Tom Bak deserves special thanks for being such an inspiring colleague and shouldering the burden of the Disorders of Movement and Cognition Clinic for 10 years. At the hospital, Kate Dawson was a tower of strength and support to our patients and their families (together with Angela O’Sullivan and Lynne MacDonald) who have helped so much with the research. Sharon Davies coordinated the research at the MRC-CBU and also used her copy-editing skills in preparing this revision of the book.
In 2007, I moved to Sydney as an ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neurology based at Neuroscience Research Australia. I was extremely fortunate that Eneida Misohi and Michael Hornberger accompanied me on this journey into the unknown and particularly that we teamed up with Olivier Piguet, a true gem of a colleague, and together we started Frontier, our research team dedicated to the study of frontotemporal dementia admirably supported by the ARC and the NHMRC. Somewhat amazingly, colleagues referred patients and over the past 9 years we have assessed over 400 patients from all over Australia as well as a few from New Zealand. I have benefitted from amazing colleagues at Neuroscience Research Australia, where Frontier is based, notably Glenda Halliday and Matthew Kiernan (now at Sydney University). My education into the mysteries of aphasia have continued under the tutelage of Kirrie Ballard and Cathy Taylor. As in Cambridge, young neurologists have been the life-blood of the research enterprise and I have been so lucky to mentor James Burrell, Patricia Lillo, Cristian Leyton, Emma Devenney, and Rebekah Ahmed, all of whom are outstanding. Our research assistants and PhD students are too numerous to list but our postdoctoral researchers Fiona Kumfor, Muireann Irish, and Ramon Landon-Romero deserve special mention for their contributions. Finally my PA, Sarah Homewood, has tolerated my idiosyncrasies and supported me during this journey down under.
John R. Hodges
Sydney
May 2016