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Norman Foster, MD

Professor of Neurology

Director, Center for Alzheimer’s Care, Imaging and Research (CACIR)

Senior Investigator, The Brain Institute

Dr. Norman Foster is Professor of Neurology and Senior Investigator in The Brain Institute at the University of Utah. He is Director of the University of Utah Center for Alzheimer’s Care, Imaging and Research (CACIR), the Intermountain West’s first academic program devoted to Alzheimer’s and related memory disorders, which he helped establish in 2006.

Dr. Foster received his undergraduate training at MacMurray College in Illinois, graduating summa cum laude with a dual major in Biology and Chemistry. He received his MD from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he subsequently completed a one-year internship in Straight Medicine. After completing his residency with the University of Utah Department of Neurology, Dr. Foster moved to Bethesda, Maryland for a three-year fellowship in Experimental Therapeutics with the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke at the NIH.

Before returning to Utah, Dr. Foster served over 20 years as a faculty member of the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan. During his tenure there, he established the first dementia clinic in Michigan, which he directed from 1984-2006, and led the Clinical Core and was Associate Director of the NIH-funded Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Dr. Foster is a chartered member of the NIH Clinical Neuroscience and Neurodegeneration Study Section, the Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical Society, the American Neurological Association, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. He has been listed as one of “The Best Doctors in America” nine times during his career, and was recognized in 2007 by Utah Business Magazine as a “Health Care Hero” for his clinical innovation.

Dr. Foster’s research focuses primarily on brain imaging, clinical drug trials, and the clinical features and pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia and related neurodegenerative disorders. He and his collaborators are validating FDG-PET as a biomarker for frontotemporal dementia.

His wife, Carol, is a pediatric endocrinologist and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Utah. They have two children -- Daniel, a financial analyst who lives in Michigan, and Sarah, who is studying hydrogeology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  His interests include history of African-American health care, Russian history, hiking and cross-country skiing.

Selected Publications

• Foster NL, Wang AY, Tasdizen T, Fletcher PT, Hoffman JM, Koeppe RA. Realizing the potential of positron emission tomography with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose to improve the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer Dement 2008;4(S1):S29-36.

• Habeck C, Foster NL, Perneczky R, Kurz A, Alexopoulos P, Koeppe RA, Drzezga A, Stern Y. Multivariate and univariate neuroimaging biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease. Neuroimage. 2008 May 1;40(4):1503-15.

• Foster NL, Heidebrink JL, Clark CM, Jagust WJ, Arnold SE, Barbas NR, Decarli CS, Turner RS, Koeppe RA, Higdon R, Minoshima S. FDG-PET improves accuracy in distinguishing frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Brain. 2007;130:2616-35.

• Fletcher PT, Powell S, Foster NL, Joshi SC. Quantifying metabolic asymmetry modulo structure in Alzheimer's disease. Inf Process Med Imaging. 2007;20:446-57.

• Foster NL. A new framework for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease [Invited Editorial]. Lancet Neurol. 2007 Aug;6(8):667-9.

• Porter AB, Healy L, Foster NL, Josephs KA. Compulsive urination as a presenting symptom of frontotemporal dementia [Letter]. Eur J Neurol. 2007 Aug;14(8):e16-7.

Book Chapters

• Foster NL. Strategies for using molecular neuroimaging in dementia. In: Duyckaerts C, Litvan I (Eds.), Dementias: Handbook of Clinical Neurology. Edinburgh ; New York: Elsevier, 2008, 87-95.

• Foster NL. Neuroimaging [Book Chapter]. In: Weiner MF, Lipton AM (Eds.), The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Alzheimer Disease and Other Dementias. In press, 2008.

Complete List of Publications

A more complete listing of Dr. Foster's publications may be found here.