Category: Expertise

The cellular secret of how memories are made, and lost

Posted on | by Julie
Dr. Sheena Josselyn - Photo credit: SickKid news

Dr. Sheena Josselyn

From: SickKids news

Scientists use a peptide to strengthen connections between brain cells and restore memory in a pre-clinical model.

Research led at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is illuminating the mechanism underlying memory, which could result in future therapeutic targets for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. 

Alzheimer’s disease is a condition that causes memory loss, characterized by the accumulation of a protein, called A-beta, in the brain that damages neurons and their connections.

Published in Nature Neuroscience, Drs. Paul Frankland and Sheena Josselyn, Senior Scientists in the Neurosciences & Mental Health program, used a peptide to block adverse effects of the accumulation of A-beta in pre-clinical models – a technique that showed promise in restoring memory.

Continue reading →

Watch University of Calgary’s Lecture of a Lifetime 2022 with Dr. Samuel Weiss

Posted on | by Julie
Sam Weiss - inspired science

Sustaining a career that includes making two major scientific discoveries, winning a Gairdner Award, founding the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, and a foray into health policy requires fuel — lots of it — and Dr. Samuel Weiss, PhD’83, knows how to find it.

From being dragged back to school by his mom for the third year of his undergrad in 1977, to being encouraged to bring his knowledge and expertise to Ottawa last year by Canada’s minister of mental health and addictions, Weiss says there was one driving force at play in every stage of his career: Inspiration.

Continue reading →

Congratulations to the winners of the 2021 CAN- CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Awards!

Posted on | by Julie

The Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (CIHR-INMHA) are proud to announce the winners of the 2021 Brain Star Awards.

The CIHR-INMHA Brain Star awards, administered for 2021 by the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, are awarded to students and trainees who have published high impact discoveries in all fields and disciplines covered by CIHR’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction in the 2021 calendar year.

The top 3 Brain Star Award winners of the year have been invited to make a presentation at the CAN meeting in May.

Read about the Brain Star Award winners of 2021

CIHR Faces of Health Research 2022: Dylan Smith

Posted on | by Julie
Dylan Smith

All humans require sleep daily to be physically and mentally healthy. Sleep is known to play a role in solidifying new memories and learning. However, researchers do not fully understand the processes in the brain that underlie the consolidation of newly acquired information and skills during sleep.

With the support of a CIHR Fellowship, Dr. Dylan Smith from University of Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research is combining electroencephalography (EEG) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to peer inside the brains of healthy volunteers and study these processes at work.

Study participants are placed inside an MRI brain scanner wherein they are instructed to solve a visual puzzle before falling asleep. Dr. Smith is analyzing the data from these brain scans with a focus on sleep spindles – fast bursts of brain activity linked to sleep and memory – in parts of the brain associated with learning, such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and striatum. This research is providing new insight into how our brains integrate new learning while we’re sleeping.

Learn more about the Faces of health research 2022 on the CIHR website.

Related reading: