Programme 2018

Speakers :

Catharine Winstanley, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia

Against the odds: insights into the nature of addiction from studying decision making in rats

Dr Luke Clark
Director, Centre for Gambling Research at UBC
Department of Psychology

Deconstructing the modern slot machine: gambling, game features and addiction

More information and tickets here

Satellite 1: Canadian Action and Perception Network (CAPnet)

Satellite 2: 6th Annual Canadian Neurometabolic Meeting

Satellite 3: Canadian Neurophotonics Platform

Satellite 4: Neural stem cells in development and adulthood

Lynn Raymond, President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

Sam Weiss, Scientific Director of CIHR’s Institute for Neuroscience and Mental Health

Rick Huganir | Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Receptors, Synapses and Memory

Gordon M. Shepherd | Yale School of Medicine

From microcircuits to neuroenology: the revolutions in olfaction

• Catharine Winstanley | UBC
  Deciphering decision making: exploring the neural systems underlying the evaluation versus employment of cognitive effort in rats
• Julien Doyon | Université de Montréal
  Cortico-Striatal Contributions to Motor Sequence Learning and Consolidation
• Jessica Grahn | Western University
  Striatal role in auditory sequence perception

Posters/exhibits

Rui Costa | Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute

Starting new actions and learning from it

Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity in Neuroscience Workshop 

(limited attendance, must be pre-registered)

Lunch on own

1:30 – 3:00

Parallel symposium 1 | Tackling Proteinopathies: New Strategies to Identify and Test Drug Targets.

Chair: Maxime W. Rousseaux | Baylor College of Medicine

Speakers:

• Maxime W. Rousseaux | Baylor College of Medicine
  Probing the druggable genome for new modulators of α-synuclein levels
• Jinsoo Seo | Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology
  Modeling Alzheimer’s disease using hiPSC-derived brain cell types and cerebral organoids
• Jeehye Park | Sick Kids Hospital
  Unraveling the role of MATR3 in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Blair R. Leavitt | University of British Columbia
  Huntington disease therapies: from bench to bedside

Parallel symposium 2 | Novel insights in the neurobiology of depression

Chair: Naguib Mechawar | Douglas Institute (McGill University)

Speakers:

• Caroline Ménard | CERVO Brain Research Centre (Université Laval)
  Social stress induces neurovascular pathology and immune response promoting depression
• Benoit Labonté | CERVO Brain Research Centre (Université Laval)
  Sex-specific transcriptional signatures in human depression
• Mounira Banasr | CAMH (University of Toronto)
  Linking GABAergic, astroglial and synaptic dysfunctions to stress-induced depressive-like endophenotype: importance of astroglial integrity
• Naguib Mechawar | Douglas Institute (McGill University)
  The impact of child abuse on oligodendrocytes and myelination in the human brain

Parallel symposium 3 | Cannabinoid-metabolism interplay in the control of cognition and behaviour

Chair: Stephanie Fulton | Université de Montréal

Speakers:

• Giovanni Marsicano | University of Bordeaux
  Hippocampal CB1 receptors control incidental associations
• Matthew Hill | University of Calgary
  Genetic Variance in Endocannabinoid Signaling Modulates Hormonal and Dietary Influences on Feeding and Metabolism
• Guillaume Ferreira | University of Bordeaux
  Obesogenic diet impairs memory through hippocampal endocannabinoid system
• Stephanie Fulton | Université de Montréal
  ABHD6 in the nucleus accumbens as a unique modulator of endocannabinoid tone, energy metabolism and reward

Parallel symposium 4 | Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Understanding an invisible injury.

Chair: Anne Wheeler | SickKids Hospital

Speakers

• Brian Christie | University of Victoria
  Effects of Repeated Concussions in the Juvenile Brain.
• Richelle Mychasiuk | University of Calgary
  The use of telomere length as a biomarker for mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in preclinical and clinical populations
• Cheryl Wellington | University of British Columbia
  Advances in the CHIMERA (Closed Head Injury Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration) platform of experimental traumatic brain injury
• Sandy Shultz | Monash University
  Neurological abnormalities in collision sport athletes with a history of concussion

Careers inside and outside academia

Organizer & Moderator: Stephanie Borgland

Speakers:

• Euan Ramsey, PhD.  Co-Founder & COO of Precision Nanosystems
• Orsha Magyar, M.Sc, CHN    CEO & Founder, NeuroTrition
• Steven Wainwright, PhD.  Medical Science Liaison for Shire Pharma Canada

Science policy session

Organizer: Katalin Toth

Moderator: Jaideep Bains

Invited speakers:

• Matt Jeneroux, MP, Conservative Shadow Minister of Science
• Joyce Murray, Liberal MP for Vancouver Quadra
• Elizabeth May, MP, leader of the Green Party
• Brian Masse, MP for Windsor West, Critic for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, NDP

Plenary symposium 2 | Shaping motivational drive: From synapses to circuits to mesoscale responses

Chair: Stephanie Borgland | Hotchkiss Brain Institute

Speakers :

• Stephanie Borgland | Hotchkiss Brain Institute
  Synaptic alterations in the lateral OFC with diet induced obesity
• Rosemary Bagot | McGill University
  Neural endophenotypes of stress susceptibility
• Timothy Murphy | University of British Columbia
  High-throughput electrophysiological, behavioral, or social event triggered imaging of mouse mesoscale brain activity

Posters/exhibits

Kay Tye | MIT Picower Institute for learning and memory

Neural Circuits Underlying Positive and Negative Valence

Parallel symposium 5 | Synapse to nucleus: new insights into epigenomic, transcriptional, and translational programs underlying neural circuit plasticity

Chair: Stefano Brigidi | University of California San Diego

Speakers

• Iva Zovkic | University of Toronto Mississauga
  Histone variants regulate memory formation
• Wayne Sossin | McGill University
  RNA granules consist of stalled polysomes: Exploring mechanisms for their formation
• Tae-Kyung Kim | University of Texas Southwestern
  Activity-dependent gene expression program underlying brain plasticity
• Stefano Brigidi | University of California San Diego
  Communication of pathway-specific circuit activity to the genome by the immediate early gene Npas4

Parallel symposium 6 | Bridging the gap between mesoscopic and microscopic brain imaging

Chair: Ravi Rungta | French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM)

Speakers

• Ravi Menon | Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario
  Using fMRI to study laminar and columnar activity
• Ravi Rungta | French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM)
  Linking synaptic activation to hemodynamic signals for functional brain imaging
• Bojana Stefanovic | Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
  Neurovascular imaging in health and in Alzheimer’s Disease
• Matthieu Vanni | University of British Columbia
  Neural circuits mapping using mesoscopic calcium imaging in mice

Parallel symposium 7 | Novel molecular targets of Alzheimer’s disease pathology

Chair:  Hideto Takahashi | Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal
Chair:  Vania Ferreira Prado | University of Western Ontario

Speakers

• Hideto Takahashi | Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal
  Role of synaptic organizer Neurexin on amyloid β-induced synaptic pathology
• Vania Ferreira Prado | University of Western Ontario
  Role of cholinergic-induced RNA Metabolism change in Alzheimer’s-Like Pathology
• Jack H. Jhamandas | University of Alberta
  Amylin Receptor: A Potential Therapeutic Target for Alzheimer’s Disease
• Weihong Song | University of British Columbia
  Prenatal Vitamin A deficiency facilitates Alzheimer’s pathogenesis

Parallel symposium 8 | Predicting Fear and Safety in the Brain

Chair: Mihaela Iordanova | Concordia University

Speakers

• Gavan McNally | The University of New South Wales
  Parsing the amygdala mechanisms for learning
• Susan Sangha | Purdue University
  Effect of safety cues on fear and reward seeking behaviors and its neuronal correlates
• Michael McDannald | Boston College
  Beyond reward: ventral striatal/ventral pallidal contributions to rapid and accurate fear discrimination
• Mihaela Iordanova | Concordia University
  Mesolimbic circuits of aversive prediction error

Freda Miller | University of Toronto

Stem cells and growth factors: building and repairing the mammalian nervous system

Plenary symposium 3 | Glia in brain health, disease and repair

Chair: Brian MacVicar | UBC
Speakers:

• Brian MacVicar | UBC
  Roles for astrocytes and pericytes in the regeneration of cerebral blood vessels after stroke
• Michael Salter | University of Toronto
  Sex, Pain and Microglia
• Keith Murai | McGill University
  Optimizing Brain Circuit Microenvironments Through Neuron-Astrocyte Communication

Coffee break

Beth Stevens | Harvard Medical School

3:30 – 5:00

Parallel symposium 9 | Time and memory

Chair:  Sheena Josselyn | The Hospital for Sick Children

Speakers

• Mary Cheng | University of Toronto Mississauga
  miR-132/212 mediates seasonal plasticity of the central circadian clock
• Qi Yuan | Memorial University
  Pheromone communication of odor-specific fear in rats
• Satoshi Kida | Tokyo University of Agriculture
  Time-dependent regulation of memory retrieval by hippocampal clock
• Mauro Costa-Mattioli | Baylor College of Medicine
  New mechanisms underlying memory dysfunction

Parallel symposium 10 | Novel Approaches to Promoting Spinal Plasticity

Chair: Ian Winship | University of Alberta

Speakers

• Wolfram Tetzlaff | University of British Columbia
  Cortical Motor Map Plasticity and Functional Recovery via Spared Dorsolaterally Projecting Corticospinal Neurons after Spinal Cord Injury
• Alyson Fournier | McGill University
  Small Molecule Stabilization of 14-3-3 Protein-Protein Interactions to Promote Axon Regeneration
• Karim Fouad | University of Alberta
  Eliciting inflammation enables successful rehabilitative training in chronic spinal cord injury
• Ian Winship | University of Alberta
  Enhancing Spinal Plasticity to Improve Recovery from Cortical Stroke

Parallel symposium 11 | Mechanisms underlying brain dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease

Chair: Doug Munoz | Queen’s University

Speakers

• Marco A.M. Prado | Western University
  Crossing the translational gap in Alzheimers disease research
• Fernanda G. De Felice | Queen’s University
  Molecular connections between Alzheimers disease and Type 2 diabetes
• Isabelle Aubert | University of Toronto
  Alzheimers Disease: Vascular and Neuronal Plasticity
• Douglas P. Munoz | Queen’s University
  Biomarkers of disease progression in a non-human primate model of Alzheimers Disease

Parallel symposium 12 | Development and function of motor circuits: from hardwired patterning to functional maturation and sensory integration.

Chair: Artur Kania | IRCM (Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal)

Speakers

• Douglas W. Allan | University of British Columbia
  Target-dependent gene activation in neurons is mediated by widespread deployment of a BMP-responsive cis-regulatory element.
• Angelo Iulianella | Dalhousie University
  Taming the gradient: the intrinsic regulation of Sonic Hedgehog signaling in the specification of ventral cell identities in the developing spinal cord
• Tuan Vu Bui | University of Ottawa
  A switch in the mode of operation of spinal locomotor networks in the developing zebrafish
• Tomoko Ohyama | McGill University
  Circuit mechanism underlying a Drosophila larval escape sequence