Subventions financées

Circadian rhythms are an adaptation to the daily cycle of night and day on Earth and control when an individual eats, sleeps, or works. One third of Canadians suffer from difficulty sleeping, and circadian disruptions to sleep are often associated with psychiatric diseases. For example, circadian disruptions may predispose patients to disease, or could be symptoms.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a common and serious illness in which people keep drinking despite major harms. Even with today’s best medications and addiction treatments, relapse is frequent, and severe AUD can shorten life expectancy by many years.

The brain relies on precise control of gene expression to support learning, memory, and healthy communication between neurons. One important way cells achieve this control is through chemical marks added to RNA molecules, the messages that tell cells which proteins to make.

As humans, we are constantly making decisions, and those decisions are heavily influenced by how our environment shapes our thought and behavioral patterns. This process – the ability to adapt your behavioural strategy in the face of changing environmental conditions – is often referred to as cognitive flexibility. In ideal conditions, cognitive flexibility allows us to adapt our behavior in optimal ways.

Considering that sleep disturbances brought on by shift work, nighttime light pollution from technology (e.g., TVs, phones, tablets, computers, etc.), and other factors (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression, etc.) are common in modern society, we established a maternal sleep disruption model to study the impact of sleep disturbances on offspring brain development and behaviour.

As we age, the brain naturally changes, sometimes making it harder to remember things, stay focused, or think as quickly as we used to. Despite these changes, the aging brain still has an important ability called plasticity: it can adapt and reorganize itself. Harnessing this ability may help us support brain health later in life.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord. Over time, many people with MS enter a progressive phase marked by steady worsening of disability. This decline is largely driven by the loss of nerve cells and their connections. Unfortunately, most current treatments focus on suppressing the immune system and provide little benefit once the disease becomes progressive. We still do not fully understand why nerve cells become vulnerable and die in progressive MS.

A type of brain tumour called IDH-mutant glioma is the most common brain tumour in young adults aged 20 to 40. While patients can survive for over a decade, these tumours are incurable, and require repeated surgeries and aggressive treatments. These tumours come in two forms: astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas. Oligodendrogliomas respond better to chemotherapy and patients live longer, but we do not fully understand why.

La douleur chronique touche une grande partie de la population et ses effets vont bien au-delà de la sensation de douleur. On sait maintenant qu’elle peut s’accompagner de changements dans le cerveau, mais on connaît encore très peu ses impacts possibles sur la santé des vaisseaux sanguins cérébraux.

Every year, more than 165,000 Canadians experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI). For many, recovery is incomplete, leading to long-lasting cognitive, and emotional impairments and loss of physical independence. A major contributor to physical disability is damage to neurons in the brain’s cortex that normally connect to the corticospinal tract, the brain’s high-speed wiring system responsible for voluntary movement of the hands, arms, and legs.