At this engaging three-day event, you'll have opportunities to network, find a mentor, preview emerging technology, hone your leadership skills, and participate in continuing education. Whether you are a junior or senior industry professional, it's an event you won't want to miss!
*subject to change
After attending this session, participants will be able to:
CE Credits: 1.00
Instruction Level: Intermediate
Over the past four decades, remarkable advances in medical and surgical care have transformed congenital heart disease (CHD) from a frequently fatal condition into a chronic disease compatible with long-term survival and improved quality of life. During this same period, the field of cardiac neurodevelopment has emerged as a major area of focus in clinical care and scientific inquiry, leading to substantial advances in the identification, characterization, and monitoring of neurodevelopmental outcomes among individuals with CHD.
Despite this progress, important challenges remain. Neurodevelopmental outcomes have shown limited improvement over time, currently identified risk factors explain only a fraction of outcome variability, and clinicians remain limited in their ability to predict individual developmental trajectories. This presentation will examine these unresolved problems and explore potential reasons for their persistence, with particular attention to limitations of traditional risk-factor approaches and the need for more mechanistic models of development.
The presentation will review emerging evidence regarding the role of children's experiences within medical, family, and social environments in shaping neurodevelopmental outcomes and will discuss promising avenues for advancing research and clinical care. These include efforts to better characterize developmental experiences, identify modifiable influences on outcomes, and integrate biological and environmental factors within a more comprehensive framework of cardiac neurodevelopment. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of key challenges facing the field and potential directions for future research and intervention.
Instruction Level: Introductory
Magnetic seizure therapy (MST) is an emerging antidepressant neurotherapeutic treatment under investigation for adults across the lifespan with major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression (MDD/TRD). Multiple clinical investigations, including randomized clinical trials conducted around the world, have demonstrated the antidepressant effects of MST. Moreover, collective evidence from preclinical and clinical studies has shown that MST is cognitively safe and, independent of its antidepressant effects, may provide cognitive benefits. This presentation will synthesize published clinical and neurocognitive data, as well as unpublished neuroimaging findings, to (1) characterize MDD/TRD and its impact on cognitive functioning, (2) describe the development and evolution of MST, (3) discuss the antidepressant effects of MST in adults with MDD/TRD, and (4) examine the neurocognitive effects of MST.
Instruction Level: Advanced
Many pediatric illnesses that affect the central nervous system—whether directly, as in brain tumors, or indirectly, as in complications of treatment for systemic disease—share a common consequence: they alter the trajectory of typical development. Rather than producing a uniform pattern of cognitive loss, these illnesses frequently disrupt the emergence of attention and executive function skills that are still developing at the time of insult, producing deficits that may not be apparent until later developmental stages demand more from these systems. This talk will present a developmental framework for understanding neurocognitive risk that cuts across specific pediatric illness populations, drawing primarily on research from pediatric cancer survivorship while highlighting parallels to other chronic and acute conditions affecting the CNS. The framework addresses both halves of clinical practice: surveillance (how and when to monitor for emerging neurocognitive difficulties, including the challenge of detecting delayed-onset or "sleeper" effects) and support (evidence-based approaches to intervention, from cognitive remediation to school-based accommodations). The goal is to equip neuropsychologists, regardless of their specific clinical population, with a shared conceptual model and practical tools for identifying children at risk and intervening before developmental windows close. After attending this session, participants will be able to: 1. Describe the developmental mechanisms by which pediatric illnesses affecting the CNS (e.g., through direct insult or systemic/treatment-related effects) disrupt the typical trajectory of attention and executive function development. 2. Identify at least two illness-specific risk factors (e.g., treatment intensity, age at diagnosis/insult, CNS-directed therapy) associated with elevated neurocognitive risk in pediatric populations. 3. Apply a developmental framework for neurocognitive surveillance to guide the timing and selection of monitoring approaches across different pediatric illness populations, including attention to delayed-onset effects.
4. Differentiate between evidence-based intervention approaches (e.g., cognitive remediation, school-based accommodations) appropriate for addressing neurocognitive difficulties in children with chronic or acute CNS-impacting illness.
CE Credits: 1.50
The human prefrontal cortex (HPFC) participates in most cognitive and social activities but a comprehensive framework for how the various sectors of the HPFC work together or are integrated with more posterior cortical and subcortical brain regions has not been agreed upon. Nor is it clear whether the prefrontal cortex simply processes (in various ways) information stored elsewhere in the brain or there are unique forms of information stored there. In this presentation, I update a framework that I proposed over four decades ago that provides a testable framework of PFC functions and relies upon the notion of hierarchical time gradients of representational knowledge. After a brief introduction to the issue, I will describe the geography of the human prefrontal cortex and its functional divisions. I will then indicate what the role of the various anatomical regions of the HPFC might be across these functional divisions. Establishing an agreed-upon framework for understanding HPFC function is essential to complete our understanding of human evolution to date, the development of higher cognitive and social functions and educational achievement, and for a better understanding of the necessity behind the inclusion of HPFC representations in networks that span different brain sectors. All these issues are subsequently discussed along with the potential for HPFC plasticity across the lifespan. I will conclude my presentation by speculating on the role that the prefrontal cortex of the brain might play in the brain's future evolution.
Brain health is entering a new era. Advances in digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and continuous data collection are transforming how we understand, measure, and support cognitive and neurological health. These developments create new opportunities to detect change earlier, monitor patients in real-world settings, personalize care, and generate evidence that complements traditional neuropsychological assessment. At the same time, they raise important questions about clinical validity, implementation, ethics, equity, and the evolving role of neuropsychologists within an increasingly digital healthcare ecosystem. This keynote will explore the major technological and policy trends shaping the future of brain health, highlight emerging examples from research and clinical practice, and discuss how the neuropsychology community can help ensure these innovations are translated into meaningful improvements in patient care.
Neuropsychologists are increasingly asked to work as part of neurology and neurosurgical teams and contribute to the shared treatment decision-making process with patients. This session follows five cases along that path from diagnosis to treatment. The first three cases are diagnostic puzzles: dementia with Lewy bodies in a woman whose autonomic and visual symptoms began 15 years before diagnosis; cognitive and motor sequelae of hypoxia after COVID-19 hospitalization that raised concern for a parkinsonian syndrome; and adult-onset neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation in which imaging and genetic findings left both BPAN and PKAN in the differential. The final two cases move into the surgical setting, examining how pre-operative evaluation identifies patients at risk of adverse events during awake procedures, and how reliable change methods can compare cognitive outcomes after deep brain stimulation and high-intensity focused ultrasound for essential tremor. Moderated discussion will connect the cases through shared themes, including illness trajectory as an important piece of the diagnostic evaluation and the neuropsychologist’s role in uncovering features that are relevant for diagnostic and prognostic decision-making. Critically, the session will call attention to how neuropsychologists translate their findings, and their uncertainty, into shared decision-making with patients as part of a multi-disciplinary team. Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to: 1. Explain how neuropsychological profiles can be integrated with illness trajectory, neuroimaging, and genetic findings to differentiate neurodegenerative, genetic, and post-hypoxic etiologies. 2. Identify pre-operative factors, such as claustrophobia, trauma history, aggression risk, and language needs, that bear on candidacy for awake neurosurgical procedures. 3. Describe how reliable change indices are used to evaluate cognitive outcomes after deep brain stimulation and focused ultrasound.
Moderator: Karen Blackmon, Ph.D., ABPP-CN
Presentations:
1. Individual Differences in Temporal Onset of the Core Features in Dementia with Lewy Bodies: A Case Study - Adam Raines, Ph.D. 2. Disentangling Post-Hypoxic Cognitive Impairment from Parkinsonian Syndromes: A Neuropsychological Case of Lance-Adams Syndrome - Kailyn Bare 3. Differential Diagnosis Between BPAN and PKAN: An Atypical Presentation of Adult Onset NBIA - Humza Khan 4. Safety Screening for Awake Procedures: The Role of Neuropsychologists - Margaret Zhong 5. Comparison of Neurocognitive Outcomes Following High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for the Treatment of Essential Tremor (ET) - Yamil Cristobal, PsyD
This presentation introduces audience members to the key components of a comprehensive diagnostic interview for patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI)/concussion. It will review strategies for evaluating the validity of a concussion diagnosis, identifying potential causes of persistent symptoms in both pediatric and adult patients, and recognizing non-neurologic factors that may contribute to ongoing complaints. The presentation will also review current evidence on commonly used assessment tools and frequently recommended treatments for patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI)/concussion.
Integrating neuroimaging into case conceptualization is an essential skill for neuropsychologists across subspecialties. This workshop will introduce foundational principles of neuroimaging in pediatric populations and highlight how radiological findings can be meaningfully integrated into neuropsychological assessment and clinical decision making.
CE Credits: 0
Drs. Sperling and Gillaspy will discuss efforts to advocate for increased reimbursement for neuropsychological testing and evaluation services and the role of neuropsychologists in these efforts. They will review CPT coding and CMS policy changes for 2027. A review of health policy and healthcare financing advocacy efforts and outcomes at the state and federal level will be provided. Lastly, there will be a discussion of the updated 2026 Psychological and Neuropsychological Testing Billing and Coding Guide.
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