Thursday, January 31, 2013

Williamsburg TBI Rehabilitation Conference Registration Is Now Open

The Virginia Commonwealth University Traumatic Brain Injury Model System cordially invites you to register for the 37th Annual Williamsburg TBI Rehabilitation Conference, Rehabilitation of the Adult and Child with Brain Injury: Practical Solutions to Real-World Problems. A group of nationally and internationally renowned faculty has been assembled. Keynote presentations will focus on the law, policy, and practice; interdisciplinary approaches to community-based treatment; and neuropsychiatric management. Breakout sessions will focus on executive function disorders, cognitive support technologies, neuropsychology, aging, community-based neurobehavioral programming, survivor and caregiver perspectives, and sports concussion. The conference will feature peer-reviewed oral presentations by leaders in the field as well as indepth, hands-on training with two exceptional, day-long preconference workshops from which participants can choose, one on behavior management and the other on empirically based family intervention. For more information on the conference agenda, please visit the conference Web site.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

MSKTC introduces Caris Peace

The MSKTC would like to highlight the work of Gaylen Ross & Rebecca Nelson on their 76 minute film Caris’ Peace. The film was released in 2011 with Lewis Black, Kate Burton, Caris Corfman, Nancy Giles, and Tony Shalhoub. The film is the story of New York Theater and film actress Caris Corfman, a brilliant graduate of the Yale School of Drama who as the result of a brain tumor lost her ability to make new memories. Filmed over 10 years, the documentary chronicles her courageous return to the stage, a comeback performance featured in The New York Times, and the fascinating ways she challenged her memory loss. This film captures what it is like to live trapped in the past, with only the thinnest slivers of the present.

Caris’ Peace premiered this year at the Hamptons International Film Festival, and was the official selection for the Williamstown Film Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival, Santa Fe Film Festival, with awards at the Calgary “Picture This” Film Festival on Disability, and 1st place for documentaries at the Athens International Film Festival in Ohio.

In New York, the film was featured as part of the Rubin Museum of Art’s prestigious Brainwave series, which paired moderators with neuroscientists for post film discussions. Dr. Barry Gordon of Johns Hopkins University (who is also in the film,) was part of the program as well as Dr. Andre Fenton, Dr. Robert Landry, of New York University, and Dr. John DeLuca of the Kessler Institute.

Dr. Robert Daroff of Case Western Reserve University moderated the post-discussion of the film for the Cleveland International Film Festival, and Dr. Peter Fox of University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio when the film was presented by the Austin Film Society. Please feel free to take a look at Caris Peace Trailer and for more information view the Caris Peace Facebook Page and spread the word about this wonderful documentary!

Monday, January 7, 2013

Call for Nominations of Papers for the 2010-2011 Rosenthal Award


Nominations for the 2010-2011 Rosenthal Awards are now being accepted. Winners will be announced at the June 2013 TBI Model Systems project directors meeting. The Rosenthal Award honors Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal by calling attention to his significant contribution to the TBI Model Systems National Database. The rules for nominating are as follows:

-Papers in hardcopy journals are considered only if published in the journal in calendar years 2010 or 2011; papers published in electronic journals are considered if they were posted in 2010-11.
-Peer reviewed: only papers published in peer-reviewed journals are considered.
-TBI Model Systems National Database: papers (e.g. from modules, collaborative research) that supplement the database information will be considered, but each paper should include at least some national database (i.e. form I and/or form II) data.
-2+ systems: the data from the national database should be from at least two model systems

Please send citations for papers authored by you and your staff to Dr. Marcel Dijkers from New York Traumatic Brain Injury Model System.