Congratulations to the winners of the 2023 CAN- CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Awards!

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 2023 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 2023 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.

Brain Star Award winners of 2023

Top 3 winners of 2023

Adam Ramsaran

Mechanisms controlling memory formation shift as the juvenile brain matures.

Masayuki Hata

A history of obesity triggers changes in immunity that could contribute to age-related macular degeneration

Hovy Ho-Wai Wong

A role for axonal protein synthesis in information coding in the brain

Zaki Ajabi

A new study reveals how the brain’s internal compass adapts to changing environmental cues to maintain a reliable representation of orientation in space.

Jung Hoon Jung

Study of memory recall reveals biological basis of encoding specificity in the brain

Isha Ralhan

Study reveals how neurons protect themselves from lipids damaged by oxidative stress

Weifan Dong

Identification of a potential new treatment for glioblastoma

Lisa Fang

Study first to establish a direct link between an inflammatory molecule and activity in appetite-promoting neurons linked to obesity

Mark A. Maclean

Memantine shows promise as therapy to improve outcome following traumatic brain injury

Melanie Alpaugh

Aurélie De Rus Jacquet

Development of a new brain-chip leads to important discoveries about the role of astrocytes, inflammation and the blood brain barrier in Parkinson’s Disease development

Rixing Lin

A small RNA molecule mediates antidepressant response

Brendan McAllister

Iason Keramidis

A protein called KCC2 plays a crucial role in Alzheimer’s disease progression that could be targeted by new therapeutic approaches.

Jacob Stubbs

Identification of a brain network for substance use disorder.

Jessica Royer

Memory network reorganization in temporal lobe epilepsy

Mohamed Abdelhack

Large-scale analysis reveals opposing brain signatures of sleep in task-based and resting-state conditions