Quebec

A collaboration between McGill University’s Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives and the Brain Canada Foundation, the Amazing Brain Science Talks took place at McGill University on October 14, 2023. This event, designed to demystify brain science for a wide audience, featured enlightening talks by Canadian brain health experts and speakers with lived experiences on a variety […]

Childhood trauma is associated with altered brain responses to stress PUBLISHED: 21 November 2023 – McGill University Do adults with a history of childhood trauma have altered brain responses to psychological challenges? Previous studies indicated that this can occur in laboratory animals, but it has been unclear whether it occurs in humans. Now a team of scientists, led […]

Maintaining an ion pump located in the cell membrane of neurons could slow down or reverse the pathology. Text by Jean Hamann – Université Laval nouvelles A team of researchers led by Dr. Yves De Koninck Professor at Université Laval and researcher at Université Laval’s CERVO research centre, reports in the journal Brain that they […]

Chronic pain is a disease that affects nearly 8 million Canadians and that can lead to a wide range of physical, emotional, and social challenges. Nerve injury can sometimes lead to long-lasting pain hypersensitivity, called neuropathic pain, where pain persists beyond the usual recovery period. Research by Shannon Tansley (done while she was a PhD […]

In real-world settings, humans and other primates think and move simultaneously (e.g. answering a text while walking to work). However, for practical reasons, neuroscientists study the neural basis of the primate mind in laboratory contexts where movements are strictly controlled (e.g. subjects cannot walk while in an MRI scanner). It is therefore unknown how neural […]

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is more frequent in women than men, and sex differences have been reported in symptoms and treatment response. The fact that individuals with cardiovascular disease or stroke are more prone to depression suggests vascular dysfunction may also be involved. New research by Laurence Dion-Albert, PhD student at Université Laval, shows for […]

Humans have evolved large, costly brains which enable the many cognitive tasks behind everything we think, feel, and do. The division of the brain into two hemispheres is probably one of the brain’s key organizational principles with left and right hemispheres anchoring specific cognitive processes, such as specialization for spatial and facial processing in the […]

Neurons in the brain transmit signals to other cells through the release of molecules called neurotransmitters which bind to specific receptors. These receptors effectively mediate the transfer and propagation of electrical impulse from neuron to neuron, which is how brain cells communicate. A new study led by Justine Hansen at McGill University used advanced computational […]

The failure of multiple Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials highlights the need for early markers that accurately identify individuals at risk during the pre-clinical stage before they develop severe symptoms. Within the last decade, spatial navigation deficits have recently emerged as one of the most sensitive behavioral markers of early AD – patients are frequently […]

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 6 (SCA6) is a rare inherited disease that leads to degeneration of the cerebellum, a part of the brain that coordinates movement. The disease has no cure so the identification of novel therapeutics is of high priority. Graduate student Anna Cook led a study that identified two novel therapeutic strategies for SCA6, […]