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To support the diversity of human cognitive functions, such as learning, thinking, reasoning, remembering, problem solving, decision making, and attention, brain regions flexibly form and dissolve connections on the fly. How is the brain’s capacity to transition between different functional configurations shaped by brain network architecture? Andrea Luppi, working in Bratislav Misic’s lab at McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute, investigated this question using engineering principles of network control to simulate transitions between behaviourally derived brain states. They identified >100 cognitively relevant brain states in a data-driven manner, corresponding to activation patterns aggregated over 14,000 fMRI studies from a large collaborative database called NeuroSynth, and effectively mapped how brain network organization and chemoarchitecture interact to manifest these brain states. By leveraging large-scale databases of network structure, functional activation and neurotransmitter systems, the present work provides an integrative framework for the systematic exploration of the full range of possible transitions between experimentally defined brain states. This systematic approach allowed the researchers to discover the key role of the brain’s wiring diagram in supporting flexible transitions with high energetic efficiency, and how this efficiency can be disrupted by disease and restored by targeted pharmacology.
Read the full story here: https://can-acn.org/brain-star-award-winner-andrea-luppi/
View the original research article here:
Andrea I. Luppi, S. Parker Singleton, Justine Y. Hansen, Keith W. Jamison, Danilo Bzdok, Amy Kuceyeski, Richard F. Betzel & Bratislav Misic. Contributions of network structure, chemoarchitecture and diagnostic categories to transitions between cognitive topographies. Nature Biomedical Engineering 8, 1142–1161 (2024).
Richard Naud
The international research team’s ambitious work has implications across multiple fields and sheds compelling new light on the extraordinarily complex serotonin system.
In our day-to-day lives, we’re constantly making a slew of decisions from immediate matters to prospects on the far horizon. But the evolutionary nuts-and-bolts of how our brains weigh these numerous daily decisions and what role is played by the neurotransmitter serotonin has been shrouded in mystery.
Now, a new study led by an interdisciplinary uOttawa Faculty of Medicine team delivers fascinating findings on this big topic and potentially unravels a hidden aspect of what our nervous system’s complex serotonin system is really doing inside the enigmatic organ in our skulls.
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Dr. Jean-Claude Béïque (Photo credit: University of Ottawa)
Source of text: David McFadden, Communications Advisor & Research Writer, University of Ottawa
The study’s findings could potentially help develop targeted therapeutics for mood disorders like major depressive disorder.
Our lives are filled with binary decisions – choices between one of two alternatives. But what’s really happening inside our brains when we engage in this kind of decision making?
A uOttawa Faculty of Medicine-led study published in Nature Neuroscience sheds new light on these big questions, illuminating a general principle of neural processing in a mysterious region of the midbrain that is the very origin of our central serotonin (5-HT) system, a key part of the nervous system involved in a remarkable range of cognitive and behavioral functions.
Continue readingThe 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 2024 Brain Star Awards.
The CIHR-INMHA Brain Star awards, administered 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 2024 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.
The Canadian Association for Neuroscience is proud to announce Dr. Mark Cembrowski will be awarded the 2025 Canadian Association of Neuroscience (CAN) New Investigator Award. Dr. Cembrowski has established himself as an outstanding scientist, collaborator, and mentor, conducting leading-edge research on the cellular and molecular underpinnings of cognition and brain disorders, particularly in memory.
Read our most recent newsletter here: https://can-acn.org/can-connection-march-2025/
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Gliomas are types of cancers that arise in the brain and are extraordinarily difficult to treat. They are the leading cause of brain tumour-related deaths in both children and adults. Two pioneering scientists are awarded The Brain Prize 2025 for their discoveries that open up an entirely new way of thinking about and understanding these lethal diseases, and the potential strategies to treat them.
Copenhagen, Denmark, March 5th, 2025. Neuroscientists, Professors Michelle Monje (USA) and Frank Winkler (Germany), have made transformative discoveries by showing that neural activity in the brain can promote cancer initiation, growth, spread and treatment resistance. Thus, the everyday activity that takes place in the brain promotes the development of cancers within it. Striking recent studies further show that the influence of the nervous system is not limited to tumours in the brain, but also tumours throughout the body.
These remarkable findings have laid the foundation for an entirely new field of research called ‘Cancer Neuroscience’ that represents a paradigm shift in the understanding of these cancers, and which offers vital new opportunities for treatment.
Their efforts are rewarded with The Brain Prize 2025, the world’s largest award for outstanding contributions to neuroscience, established by the Lundbeck Foundation.
The Brain Prize 2025 worth DKK 10 million (€1.3 million) is awarded to:
Michelle Monje MD, PhD, the Milan Gambhir Professor of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at Stanford Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator,
and
Frank Winkler, MD, Professor of Experimental Neurooncology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg University Hospital, Department of Neurology, and German Cancer Research Center
Congratulations to the winners!
Learn more on the Brain Prize website: https://brainprize.org/
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The Canadian Association for Neuroscience was happy to participate in the Canadian Science Policy Conference last month in Ottawa, and in the symposium organized by the Canadian Brain Research Strategy: “Scaling Research for Impact: From Local Insights to Global Solutions“ on November 20, 2025.
Read more about the symposium here: https://canadianbrain.ca/canadian-science-policy-conference-brain-health-and-research-summit-2024/
