News & Updates

Approximately 1 in 5 adolescents who report having a Brain Injury experience persistent and long-lasting emotional and behavioural challenges. The reasons why have been difficult to tease apart – until recently. Future Leader, Dr. Anne Wheeler and her research team studied pre- and post-concussion data from male and female children.

A growing number of kids’ brains have likely been spared injury thanks to enhanced safety guidelines informed by a large-scale Brain Canada-funded research platform. A series of studies made possible by the Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping (CFMM) at Western University (Western) in London, Ontario found that even minor concussions cause changes to the brain’s structure and function. These findings from the CFMM, which operates some of the most sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instrumentation in the world, informed a series of policies to protect youth while playing contact sports like soccer and hockey.

Personalized therapies are not yet a reality for children with medulloblastoma, a highly aggressive form of Brain CancerTreatment involves invasive surgery, radiation to the whole brain and spinal cord, and high doses of chemotherapy. Not only does this approach not cure all patients – the survival rate is 60% – those that do survive face lifelong side effects of radiation on the developing brain, including intellectual disability, growth issues, early strokes, and hearing loss.

In 2020, Olivier Goy, an entrepreneur, activist and photography lover from France, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – a rare neurodegenerative disease that can have many different underlying causes, presentations, and prognoses. Some patients may live with the disease for decades, while others decline rapidly.