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Western University – Canada Brain Power

Canada Brain Power

Tag: Western University

  • Better understanding the role of vision in the brain’s representation of space by studying freely moving primates

    Better understanding the role of vision in the brain’s representation of space by studying freely moving primates

    Brain Star Award winner feature: Diego B. Piza, Western University, won this prize based on the excellence of the research and its potential benefits to the health of Canadians. Brain Star Awards are presented by the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction

    The hippocampus is a structure of the mammalian brain that has been implicated in spatial memory and navigation. Its role has been primarily studied in nocturnal mammals, such as rats, that lack many adaptations for daylight vision. Here, Diego B. Piza, working in the laboratory of Julio Martinez-Trujillo at Western University, demonstrates that during 3D navigation, the common marmoset, a New World primate adapted to daylight, uses different exploration–navigation strategies compared to rats. He further shows that maps of space in the marmoset brain depend on vision-related cues and object relationships used as landmarks for navigation. It is likely that similar encoding mechanisms exist in other diurnal mammals, including humans.

    To explore their environment, marmosets predominantly use rapid head-gaze shifts for visual exploration while remaining stationary. During active movement, marmosets stabilize their head, in contrast to rats, who use low-speed head movements to scan the environment as they locomote. This work suggests that spatial memory in primates may rely on anchoring sequences of views to specific places, providing a unique mechanism for encoding spatial experiences.

    This publication represents a major technical and conceptual achievement in neuroscience.

    Read the full story: https://can-acn.org/brain-star-award-winner-diego-b-piza/

    Article citation

    Piza, D.B., Corrigan, B.W., Gulli, R.A., Do Carmo, S., Cuello, A.C., Muller, L., Martinez-Trujillo, J. Primacy of vision shapes behavioral strategies and neural substrates of spatial navigation in marmoset hippocampus. Nat Commun 15, 4053 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48374-2

    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48374-2

  • Development of a functional atlas of the human cerebellum

    Development of a functional atlas of the human cerebellum

    Brain Star Award Feature: Caroline Nettekoven, Western University, won this prize based on the excellence of the research and its potential benefits to the health of Canadians. Brain Star Awards are presented by the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction

    The human cerebellum is a brain region that is activated during many behaviours, including movement, language and cognitive tasks. However, the cerebellum’s contribution to these processes remained poorly understood because of a lack of a comprehensive functional map of this brain region. To address this, Caroline Nettekoven, working in the laboratory of Jorn Diedrichsen at Western University, fused 7 large-scale brain activity imaging (fMRI) datasets into the first comprehensive functional atlas of the cerebellum. The authors developed a computational model that learns brain organization across many datasets and derived a consensus atlas based on 111 subjects and 417 task conditions. This new atlas predicts functional boundaries better than previous atlases and any atlas based on a single dataset only – even on new, unseen data. It therefore provides the most detailed characterization of the functional organization of the human cerebellum so far.

    The new atlas provides several novel important features. For example, the atlas and the computational model are designed for precision functional mapping in individuals. Existing atlases simply present a group map, ignoring the large inter-individual variability of functional organisation. The model can integrate the new atlas with a short 10-minute localizer scan to adapt to an individual’s brain, resulting in a much better prediction of individual boundaries. This unprecedented precision will enable detailed investigations into the cerebellum’s contribution to human behaviour.

    Read the full story here

    Scientific publication

    Caroline Nettekoven , Da Zhi, Ladan Shahshahani , Ana Luísa Pinho, Noam Saadon-Grosman, Randy Lee Buckner, Jörn Diedrichsen A hierarchical atlas of the human cerebellum for functional precision mapping. Nat Commun 15, 8376 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52371-w

    https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52371-w

    https://rdcu.be/dViIJ

  • Phase 2a clinical trial reveals a small molecule called LM11A-31 is safe and slows progression of many features of Alzheimer’s Disease

    Phase 2a clinical trial reveals a small molecule called LM11A-31 is safe and slows progression of many features of Alzheimer’s Disease

    This is a Brain Star Award feature: Hayley Renee Christine Shanks, Western University, won this prize based on the excellence of the research and its potential benefits to the health of Canadians. Brain Star Awards are presented by the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction

    Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no cure. Therapeutics available to the approximately 734,000 Canadians living with AD provide symptom management without slowing disease progression. Hayley Renee Christine Shanks, working in the laboratory of Dr. Taylor Schmitz at Western University, adopted a novel approach to AD therapeutics by targeting “deep biology” — that is, receptors that control multiple fundamental cellular pathways and may therefore normalize multiple pathological processes underlying AD. This “deep biology” target, called the p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR), plays a critical role in determining  whether cells degenerate or survive. This receptor was discovered approximately 30 years ago and is widely studied in the fields of developmental neuroscience and neurology.

    In AD, p75NTR is a key receptor that mediates neuronal dysfunction, neurodegeneration, and glial reactivity. Research in AD mouse models indicates that modulation of p75NTR with a small molecule called LM11A-31 promotes neuronal resilience and reduces neuroinflammation. Building on this work, Shanks et al. (2024), Nature Medicine, was the first publication to examine selective modulation of p75NTR in individuals with AD.

    Read the full story here: https://can-acn.org/brain-star-award-winner-hayley-renee-christine-shanks/

    Read the original research article here:

    Shanks, HRC, Chen, K, Reiman, EM, Blennow, K, Cummings, JL, Massa, SM, Longo, FM, Börjesson-Hanson, A, Windisch, M, Schmitz, TW. p75 neurotrophin receptor modulation in mild to moderate Alzheimer disease: a randomized, placebo-controlled phase 2a trial. Nat Med 30, 1761–1770 (2024).  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02977-w

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-02977-w

  • ‘Dementia doesn’t have to be your destiny:’ Western research shows influence of lifestyle factors

    ‘Dementia doesn’t have to be your destiny:’ Western research shows influence of lifestyle factors

    Almost half Canadian dementia cases influenced by 12 lifestyle factors

    By Debora Van Brenk, St. Joseph’s Healthcare London, Special to Western News, December 12, 2024

    Many people could greatly improve their odds against developing dementia by making four, low-cost lifestyle changes, Western researchers have discovered.

    In the first study of its kind, researchers at Lawson Research Institute (Lawson) and Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry found about half of dementia cases in Canada can be influenced by 12 lifestyle factors.

    These twelve potential modifiable factors (based on a study of 30,000 Canadians over the age of 45), weighted from most significant factor to least were:

    1. Physical inactivity
    2. Hearing loss
    3. Obesity
    4. Hypertension
    5. Traumatic brain injury
    6. Depression
    7. Less education in early life
    8. Sleep disturbances
    9. Diabetes
    10. Smoking
    11. Excessive alcohol
    12. Social isolation

    Topping the “dirty dozen” list across Canadians’ lifespans, and especially notable from mid-life onwards, are physical inactivity, hearing loss, obesity and hypertension.

    The solutions

    • Get off the couch and get moving
    • Tackle hearing loss early
    • Lose weight
    • Get assessed and treated for high blood pressure

    “While lifestyle changes aren’t a magic pill to prevent all dementias, they’re an empowering way to reduce the overall risk.” – Surim Son, study lead author and PhD candidate at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and Lawson

    “We’re talking about significant benefits to Canadian health and health systems,” Son, who works with the dementia research program at St. Joseph’s Health Care London, added.

    Read the full article on the Western News website here: https://news.westernu.ca/2024/12/dementia-lifestyle-changes/

    The scientific research article is available in open access:

    Son, S., Speechley, M., Zou, G.Y. et al. Potentially Modifiable Dementia Risk Factors in Canada: An Analysis of Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging with a Multi-Country Comparison. J Prev Alzheimers Dis 11, 1490–1499 (2024). https://doi.org/10.14283/jpad.2024.105

  • Watch The Amazing Brain Science Talks 2024

    Watch The Amazing Brain Science Talks 2024

    The Amazing Brain Science Talks is an annual event hosted by Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives (HBHL), an interdisciplinary neuroscience program at McGill University. Presented in collaboration with Brain Canada, this event is an opportunity to learn about the latest advances in brain health research in an accessible and engaging format. Join us this year to learn about memory and the aging brain, the impact of cannabis on the developing brain, the role of eye contact in conversations, neurodiversity and more through short, engaging talks by Canadian brain health experts and speakers with lived experience.

    Learn more about this annual event here: https://amazingbrain.ca

  • Condition first discovered by Western neuroscientist named by scientific community

    Condition first discovered by Western neuroscientist named by scientific community

    Adrian Owen’s landmark research on consciousness in patients in vegetative state marks milestone

    By Jeff Renaud, August 14, 2024 – Western News

    While it has been 18 years since Adrian Owen discovered consciousness in patients in a vegetative state, hardly a day has gone by when Western University’s world-renowned neuroscientist doesn’t connect back to his Eureka moment.

    And now, in a new study published Aug. 15 by The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the medical phenomenon officially gets a name: ‘cognitive motor dissociation.’ The paper is co-authored by Owen and more than 50 leading authorities, including neurologists, doctors, imaging experts and research scientists.

    The acknowledgement of cognitive motor dissociation – labelled colloquially as ‘covert consciousness’ by the Curing Coma campaign – and its formal classification have been a long-time coming for Owen. When the discovery was first made public, some major luminaries in the field disavowed it, with some even calling it a one-off or a fluke.

    “I have always believed in what we accomplished, but of course, it is rewarding to finally see it recognized in this way,” said Owen, a professor at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. “It was completely serendipitous that we just had the right patient at the right time. If she hadn’t been aware, then maybe we wouldn’t have kept going. But this particular woman’s brain activated in response to our new imaging test the very first time we tried it. And then, the story just exploded.”

    Read the rest of this story on the Western University News website

  • Researchers at Western University use AI to predict recovery after serious brain injury

    Researchers at Western University use AI to predict recovery after serious brain injury

    Two graduate students from Western University have developed a ground-breaking method for predicting which intensive care unit (ICU) patients will survive a severe brain injury, reports Canada’s Western University in Western News.

    Matthew Kolisnyk and Karnig Kazazian, PhD candidates at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in the lab of renowned neuroscientist Adrian Owen, combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with state-of-the art machine learning techniques to tackle one of the most complex issues in critical care.

    Whether it is the result of a stroke, cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injury, lives can forever be changed by a serious brain injury. When patients are admitted to the ICU, families are faced with tremendous uncertainty. Will my loved one recover? Are they aware of what is going on? Will they ever be the same again? Despite these essential questions, health-care professionals are equally uncertain about the potential of a good recovery.

    “For years we’ve lacked the tools and techniques to know who is going to survive a serious brain injury,” said Adrian Owen.

    An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Western, in collaboration with neurologists at London Health Sciences Centre and Lawson Health Research Institute sought to find a solution to this problem. They were led by Loretta Norton, a psychology professor at King’s University College at Western, who was one of the first researchers in the world to measure brain activity in the ICU.

    The team measured brain activity in 25 patients at one of London’s two ICUs in the first few days after a serious brain injury and tested whether it could predict who would survive and who would not.

    “We previously found that information about the potential for recovery in these patients was captured in the way different brain regions communicate with each other,” said Norton. “Intact communication between brain regions is an important factor for regaining consciousness.”

    The breakthrough occurred when the team realized they could combine this imaging technique with an application of AI known as machine learning. They found they could predict patients who would recover with an accuracy of 80 per cent, which is higher than the current standard of care.

    “Modern artificial intelligence has shown incredible predictive capabilities. Combining this with our existing imaging techniques was enough to better predict who will recover from their injuries,” said Kolisnyk.

    While encouraging, the researchers say the prediction was not perfect and needs further research and testing.

    “Given that these models learn best when they have lots of data, we hope our findings will lead to further collaborations with ICUs across Canada,” said Kazazian.

    The study was published in Journal of Neurology.

    Kolisnyk M, Kazazian K, Rego K, Novi SL, Wild CJ, Gofton TE, Debicki DB, Owen AM, Norton L. Predicting neurologic recovery after severe acute brain injury using resting-state networks. J Neurol. 2023 Dec;270(12):6071-6080. doi: 10.1007/s00415-023-11941-6. Epub 2023 Sep 4. Erratum in: J Neurol. 2023 Oct 13;: PMID: 37665382.

  • Distinct neural codes underlie long- and short-term memory in different regions of the primate brain.

    Distinct neural codes underlie long- and short-term memory in different regions of the primate brain.

    Human memory can be divided into long and short-term according to the time information can remain stored and have been associated to different brain regions. The hippocampus (HPC) has been associated with the formation of long-term memories stored as changes in the strength of synapses that can last decades. On the other hand, the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (LPFC) has been associated with short-term memory, like being able to shortly remember a phone number, which is temporarily stored for a matter of seconds. Benjamin Corrigan, PhD student at the University of Western Ontario, identified distinct neural codes, or patterns of neuron firing, in the two brain regions by recording brain activity in primates performing learning tasks in virtual reality settings. These distinct neural codes elucidate some differences in how the neurons in these regions communicate, and how these methods of communication can facilitate the type of memory that each region is involved in. This knowledge can help guide research into memory formation and treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, where memory is impaired.

    Benjamin Corrigan was awarded a Brain Star award by CIHR’s Institute of Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction and the Canadian Association for Neuroscience for these discoveries.

    In this study, the researchers recorded the responses of neurons in both brain areas (hippocampus and lateral frontal cortex) during different tasks that require long and short term memory. They found that the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex use different neural codes to represent similar information. Hippocampal neurons fire action potentials in bursts, which can trigger changes in the strength of connections between neurons (synapses) during the formation of long-term memories. On the other hand, lateral prefrontal cortex neurons fire action potentials more sparsely, avoiding the strengthening of synapses but allowing longer trains of action potentials that temporarily encode memories.

    While the propensity for bursting of the hippocampus was well known, little had been done to look at the information available in the bursts. Discovering that there was similar information available between the burst code and spike code for the hippocampus could be an important step towards understanding how memories are formed. While there are informative spikes outside of bursts, further research determining whether these bursts are critical to the formation of memory is an exciting new research path.

    The hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are both regions that receive highly processed information and are also regions that are affected by neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. This paper elucidates some differences in how the neurons in these regions communicate, and how the method of communication, bursting or sparse firing, can facilitate the type of memory that each region is involved in. This knowledge can help guide research into memory formation and treatments for diseases where memory is disrupted.

    About Benjamin Corrigan

    Benjamin Corrigan performed this study as a PhD student in the laboratory of Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo at the University of Western Ontario. He performed most experiments, developed approaches to analyze the data, wrote the code for the analyses, and the first draft of the manuscript, and along with his supervisor addressed reviews and edits from fellow authors.

    Funding sources

    CIHR, NSERC, OGS, BrainSCAN and NeuroNex (National Science Foundation).

    Scientific publication

    Corrigan, B. W., Gulli, R. A., Doucet, G., Roussy, M., Luna, R., Pradeepan, K. S., Sachs, A.J., Martinez-Trujillo, J. C. (2022). Distinct neural codes in primate hippocampus and lateral prefrontal cortex during associative learning in virtual environments. Neuron, 110(13), 2155-2169.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.04.016

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627322003610

  • Video: How can understanding the neurobiology of cognition lead to new treatments for brain disorders?

    Video: How can understanding the neurobiology of cognition lead to new treatments for brain disorders?

    Lisa Saksida, PhD, holds the Canada Research Chair in Translational Cognitive Neuroscience, Tier 1. She studies the brain’s capacity for learning, memorizing and paying attention. Through mapping the neural pathways in a healthy brain, Saksida and her team can better understand the effects of neurodegenerative disorders.

    She dares to ask: how can understanding the neurobiology of cognition lead to new treatments for brain disorders?

    Saksida is a Professor of Physiology & Pharmacology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, a scientist at the Robarts Research Institute, and the Scientific Director of BrainsCAN. She has diverse expertise in psychology, robotics and artificial intelligence, and computer sciences. 

    Daring to Ask is a series that profiles Canada Research Chairs and Endowed Research Chairs at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry. These researchers are advancing knowledge in their respective fields, asking and answering questions that challenge that status quo and seeking to improve patient care. It is essential research made possible by generous donors and the investment of funding agencies.

    Learn more about the important research at the Robarts Research Institute – Western University