Jessica Agostinone and Adriana Di Polo

Major discovery at the CRCHUM: reestablishing communication between neurons to improve vision.

Neuroscience researcher Dr. Adriana Di Polo, Ph. D., and her team at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) in Canada, have made a major breakthrough in the treatment of glaucoma. Their findings could also be applicable to other neurodegenerative conditions, notably Alzheimer’s disease. The results have just been published in the prestigious British scientific journal Brain, an Oxford University Press publication.

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Paul Frankland

TORONTO – When asked to think of their earliest memory, most would think of a time when they were four or five years old. The period from birth to kindergarten appears to be forgotten. Since the late 1800s, this phenomenon has been called “infantile amnesia” and debate on why we can’t remember our earliest years has persisted to this day: Are these memories gone or are they just difficult to access?

A new study from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) shows these early memories in mice are not missing and can be brought back by directly stimulating different clusters of neurons that represent individual infantile memories in the brain. The results, published in Current Biology, provide deeper insight into the complexities of forgetting.

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Maurice Chacron

Researchers at McGill University have discovered that feedback pathways enable sensory neurons to respond to weak sensory input in order to lead to perception.
Published in PLoS Biology, their study shows that feedback pathways, which are seen ubiquitously across sensory systems and account for 90-95% of input onto sensory neurons, are necessary to generate neural responses and perception of weak sensory input that would otherwise not be detected by the organism. These results thus reveal an elegant mechanism by which the brain processes sensory information, which is critical for understanding brain function at large.

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Researchers at Université de Montréal look at the promising role played by the BMI1 gene, which could someday help mitigate or even reverse the disease.

After a decade of work, a team led by Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont researcher and Université de Montréal associate professor Dr. Gilbert Bernier has shed promising light on the origin of the most common and prevalent form of Alzheimer’s disease, hoping to someday help mitigate or even reverse the progress of the disease. The team’s results are published in the prestigious scientific journal Cell Reports.

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Psychiatric disorders share an underlying genetic basis, says landmark paper with authors from University of Toronto, University of Calgary, Université de Montréal, McGill University, Dalhousie University and other Canadian Institutions. 

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Charles Bourque

Researchers uncover mechanisms of overhydration leading to hyponatremia – a common condition in patients after a traumatic brain injury

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Understanding how the brain is built during development leads to new therapeutic approaches for repairing brain injury.

Research by Dr. Freda Miller and her team at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto has determined how brain stem cells and the environment they live within collaborate to build brain circuits during development, discoveries that have led to a better understanding of neurodevelopmental disorders in children.  The Miller lab and her basic research collaborators work closely with their clinical colleagues to harness this information and develop new approaches for treating brain injury.  These results were presented at the 2018 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, in Vancouver, May 15^th, 2018.

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Catharine Winstanley at the University of British Columbia presents discoveries revealing the brain mechanisms involved in decision-making

A team of researchers led by Dr. Catharine Winstanley at the University of British Columbia have uncovered a network of regions in the brain that are involved in determining the choice of working harder to get a bigger reward, or putting in a lesser effort and receiving a smaller reward. Understanding how the brain makes such decisions is one of the most fundamental questions in neuroscience and psychology, and sophisticated animal behavioural testing, coupled with advance brain imaging and stimulation techniques are shedding light on this important process. These results were presented at the 2018 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, in Vancouver, May 14th, 2018.

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Craig Brown

Scientists have known for years that blood vessel loss in the brain impacts cognitive decline as people age. New research from the University of Victoria has provided an explanation for why we lose blood vessels—vital knowledge that could lead to better preventive and protective strategies for maintaining brain health.

UVic neuroscientist Craig Brown and PhD student Patrick Reeson have been researching the phenomenon of clogged capillaries, the brain’s smallest blood vessels. These tiny capillaries routinely get “stuck,” clogged by cells, fat and debris in the blood. Most clear within seconds to minutes, however some can remain stuck for much longer, but what ultimately happens to these lingering clogs has remained a mystery.

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Invitation to participate in a research study on vulnerability in mental health research ethics

National study on vulnerability in mental health and psychiatric research

Does a mental health condition prevent someone from being able to participate to research?

What are acceptable conditions for ethical mental health and psychiatric research?

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Michael Hayden

New research from the University of British Columbia suggests that following a strict eating schedule can help clear away the protein responsible for Huntington disease in mice.

Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited, progressive disorder that causes involuntary movements and psychiatric problems. Symptoms appear in adulthood and worsen over time. Children born to a parent with HD have a one in two chance of inheriting the disease, which is caused by a buildup of mutant huntingtin protein (mHTT).

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Jade-Emmanuelle Deshaies – Christine Vande Velde

Eight years in the making, a discovery by neuroscientists at the CRCHUM highlights the value of long-term, fundamental research and provides important information for future drug targets.

It took eight long years of research, but now an international team led by neuroscientists at Université de Montréal has discovered a basic molecular mechanism that better helps understand how Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), works.

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Karun Singh

McMaster University Scientists have published 2 studies identifying which gene is responsible for causing brain development disorders when several genes are deleted in an individual’s genome, providing a path forward for developing new therapies.

In Ontario, there are more than 300,000 children and youth affected by a neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and intellectual disability. These disorders typically cause long-term problems and impact the day-to-day life of affected individuals and families. There are no specific treatments, and medications have side-effects that can be severe in children and young adults.

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Strong & Moszczynski

Researchers at Western University have uncovered a unique neurobiological pathway triggered by head trauma which underlies both Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also called ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

CTE is a fatal neurodegenerative disease shown to be a result of repeated head trauma, and is associated with elite athletes involved in contact sports. Previous research has shown that between 4 and 6 per cent of patients with CTE will also simultaneously show clinical features of ALS – that’s 800 fold higher than the prevalence of ALS in the general population.

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Pedro Rosa-Neto

New research could provide clinicians with insights regarding clinical progression to dementia

Doctors who work with individuals at risk of developing dementia have long suspected that patients who do not realize they experience memory problems are at greater risk of seeing their condition worsen in a short time frame, a suspicion that now has been confirmed by a team of McGill University clinician scientists.

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Naznin Virji-Babul

Concussion affects the developing adolescent brain and may delay key cognitive processes, hampering the brain’s ability to change focus and pay attention. New research from Dr. Naznin Virji-Babul’s team, published today in the journal ASN Neuro, shows that concussion changes the way that different neural networks interact, stalling the brain in a state of cognitive inflexibility.

Even at rest, the brain is continuously active, processing and exchanging information.  This active interaction between different parts of the brain is necessary for a person to be aware of her surroundings, or to be able to focus on his work or switch between tasks.

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Terrance Snutch

For the past three years, Dr. Terrance Snutch and research associate Dr. John Tyson have been working with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) to develop a novel deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing tool with promising implications for personalized medicine. About the size of a mobile phone, the MinION device is a USB-powered DNA sequencer capable of mapping complex genomic structures; with it, researchers were recently able to assemble a complete human genome using reads hundreds of times larger than has previously been possible with conventional methods.

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Artur Kania and Ronan da Silva

Research from the IRCM contributes to our understanding of how our brain locates painful stimuli

When you experience a painful sensation such as touching a hot stove with your hand, the pain is restricted to your hand, allowing you to remove it quickly from the source of heat. How does the brain know that the pain is indeed coming from your hand and not from anywhere else on your body? Work recently published by Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) researchers help clarifying this question.

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University of Calgary research study benefits people with severe essential tremor

Elias Pharaon is 85 years old and can sign his name for the first time in five years thanks to a new way to do brain surgery. Performed by a team of University of Calgary physicians and researchers with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is a new technology that allows surgeons to access the brain without cutting the skin or drilling into the skull.

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