MacFarland Seminar

"Brain Injury and Vision Loss: Medical Insights Into Our New Challenge"

AER is proud to offer the MacFarland Seminar, taking place on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at the Statewide Convention Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. A separate fee is required to attend this full day seminar in addition to the conference registration.

Sponsored by:         

Lions World Services for the Blind, Little Rock, AK

National Center on Severe & Sensory Disabilities at the University of Northern Colorado

The 2008 AER International Conference highlighted the effects of brain injury on military veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  This year the MacFarland Seminar investigates the impact of head injury on vision loss in greater depth.

The Seminar begins with a medical overview of brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy by Dr. Ann McKee, Associate Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Boston University School of Medicine and Director of the Neuropathology Service of  the New England Veterans Administration Medical Center.  Dr. McKee successfully convinced the National Football League to change its policies on concussions and recently received funding to study repetitive head injuries in athletes.  Dr. McKee will discuss the anatomical and behavioral changes associated with acquired brain injury (ABI).

Allison Hayes, part of the management team for NVT Systems in Australia, will discuss the specific effects of brain injury on visual function in adults and suggest treatment approaches that may ameliorate the impact of the disease.

Dr. Lea Hyvärinen, well-known for the vision tests she has developed for children, will conclude the medical presentation by addressing ABI in children, ranging from cortical visual impairment to concussions and other head trauma.

The Seminar ends with a panel discussion among the three presenters, joined by individuals and/or family members experiencing the impact of ABI on a daily basis, discussing the overlap of visual rehabilitation among children and adults and responding to questions from the audience.  The 2010 MacFarland Seminar promises to provide concrete information to educators and rehabilitation specialists as they work to address ABI issues in their students and clients.

The MacFarland Seminar is named in honor of Douglas C. MacFarland the former Director of the Division of Services for the Blind at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare who twice served as AAWB President.

Speakers include:

Dr. Lea Hyvärinen

Dr. Lea Hyvärinen is a world renowned pediatric ophthalmologist from Helsinki, Finland who has been working in the areas of psychophysics of vision and in the development of visually impaired children for over 30 years. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Oulu and at the University of Tampere in Finland and has professor competence since 1992.

Dr. Hyvärinen began her research in experimental fluorescein angiography at the University of Helsinki, Finland and continued in the field of clinical research at Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore MD from 1967-70. Most of her research on contrast sensitivity and on the development of visually impaired infants was completed in Helsinki in the 1970's and 80's. In 1987 she spent a sabbatical year at Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute of San Francisco writing, "Assessment of Vision and Hearing of Deaf-Blind Persons".

She helped to create services for visually impaired children by training low vision clinic teams in 1984 in Madrid and after that in all Nordic countries, Portugal, Brazil, Pakistan, China, Russia and all Baltic countries, and special educators in Ethiopia, Kenya, Germany, Italy, Portugal, China, USA, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico

Dr. Ann McKee

Dr. McKee completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin and received her medical degree from the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. She completed residency training in neurology at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital and fellowship training in neuropathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was Assistant Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School from 1991-94, when she became Associate Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr McKee directs the Neuropathology Service for the New England Veterans Administration Medical Centers (VISN-1) and the Brain Banks for the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, Framingham Heart Study, and Centenarian Study, which are all based at the Bedford VAMC. Dr. McKee is also the Chief Neuropathologist for the National VA ALS Brain Bank.

Dr. McKee’s research interests center on the neuropathological alterations of neurodegenerative diseases, with a primary focus on the role of tau protein, axonal injury, trauma, vascular injury, and neurodegeneration. Much of her current work centers on the long-term consequences of repetitive head injury from contact sports and military service. As a board-certified neurologist and neuropathologist, she is particularly interested in the clinical, behavioral and psychological manifestations of pathological disease and the neuroanatomical localization of clinical symptoms. She has written widely on many neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy Body disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Multiple System Atrophy, Frontotemporal Degeneration, Corticobasal Degeneration and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). She has been an invited participant in several NIH-sponsored workshops on Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Vascular Dementia and Traumatic Brain Injury. Dr. McKee has unparalleled experience in the neuropathology of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and recently won the Moore Award Honorable Mention for her paper entitled “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy of Football Players” at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neuropathologists. Her work has been essential in establishing the neuropathological diagnostic criteria for CTE and for microvascular CNS injury. She is also keenly interested in the neuropathology of normal aging and disorders of the spinal cord.

Allison Hayes

Allison obtained her Bachelor of Science (Hons) from New South Wales University in Sydney Australia in 1988, with major in Biochemistry & Neurophysiology. Allison then followed a path of clinical training in Orientation and Mobility, specialising in the development of programs for people with vision loss from Acquired Brain Injury.

Over a 15 year period Allison gained clinical rehabilitation experience working as a Senior Orientation & Mobility Instructor for the Guide Dogs Association in South Australia. Allison has also had several years experience in management of community support programs for people with moderate to severe brain injury.

Allison has maintained her connection with Low Vision services that relate to neurological vision loss and in 2005 she was a co-founder of the Australian Company Neuro Vision Technology (NVT) Pty Ltd. Allison’s main role within NVT Systems is the development of rehabilitation products and educational programs for staff working in the area of Low Vision and brain injury rehabilitation.