Category: News

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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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.

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Pioneering research into brain cancer is awarded the world’s largest brain research prize, The Brain Prize

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/