We are delighted to announce that one of Australia's leading motivational speakers and comedians, the incomparable Robyn Moore, will be MC for the Alzheimers Australia 14th national conference. Robyn is a great friend and advocate for people with dementia and has been associated with Alzheimers Australia for a number of years.

Professor Steven R. Sabat has been at Georgetown University since earning his doctorate at the City University of New York in 1976, where he specialized in neuropsychology. The main focus of his research has been the intact cognitive and social abilities (including aspects of selfhood) of people with Alzheimers disease in the moderate to severe stages of the disease, the subjective experience of having the disease, and the ways in which communication between those diagnosed and their caregivers may be enhanced.

In addition, Professor Sabat's interests include the epistemological basis of our understanding of the effects of brain injury on human beings.

Professor Sabat has explored all of these issues in numerous scientific journal articles, in his book The Experience of Alzheimers Disease: Life Through a Tangled Veil (Blackwell, 2001), and in his co-edited book, Dementia: Mind, Meaning, and the Person (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Professor Raymond Tallis is a philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic and was until recently a physician and clinical scientist. Born in Liverpool in 1946, one of five children, he trained as a doctor at Oxford University and at St Thomas' in London before going on to become Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford.

Professor Tallis retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer, though he remains Visiting Professor at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London.

Over the past 20 year Professor Tallis has published fiction, poetry and 18 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art and cultural criticism. Together with over a hundred articles, these books offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being.

Amongst his 200+ medical publications are two major textbooks: The Clinical Neurology of Old Age (Wiley, 1988) and the comprehensive Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (Harcourt Brace, co-edited with Howard Fillitt, 6th edition, 2003). His recent publications include The Enduring Significance of Parmenides: Unthinkable Thought (Continuum, 2007) which examines the nature and origin of the cognitive revolution the inaugurated Western thought; and The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Round Your Head (Atlantic, 2008) in which he reflects on the mystery of embodiment.