UNews - Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience

Navigation and spatial memory — brain region newly identified to be involved

caroline.zentner — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:56:08 +0000

Research conducted in a collaboration between Drs. Dun Mao, a researcher in Dr. Bruce McNaughton’s lab at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, and Steffen Kandler, a researcher in Professor Vincent Bonin’s lab at Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders (NERF) in Belgium, has found neural activity patterns that may assist with spatial memory and navigation.

Their study, Sparse orthogonal population representation of spatial context in the retrosplenial cortex, has been published in Nature Communications.

Dr. Dun Mao, who received his PhD in neuroscience this spring, is now a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

“Previously, we knew little about how spatial information is encoded in large neuronal populations outside of the hippocampal formation,” says Mao (PhD ’17), who’s now a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “Now we have revealed that the retrosplenial cortex, which is highly connected with the hippocampus, encodes spatial signals in a way similar to the hippocampus. These results will help us understand how the hippocampus and neocortex interact to support spatial navigation and memory.”

Navigation in mammals, including humans and rodents, depends on specialized neural networks that encode the animal’s location and trajectory in the environment, serving essentially as a GPS (global positioning system). Failure of these networks, as seen in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions, results in severe disorientation and memory deficits.

When an animal enters a specific place in its environment, ‘place cells’ in the hippocampus, a brain area known for its role in navigation and memory formation, begin firing. At any given location, only a few place cells are active, with the remaining neurons being largely silent. This sparse firing pattern maximizes information storage in memory networks while minimizing energy demands.

In addition to the hippocampus, the retrosplenial cortex is involved in spatial orientation and learning and has dense connections with the hippocampus. To better understand its role, Mao and Kandler measured activity in the retrosplenial cortex in mice as they moved on a treadmill fitted with tactile stimuli. As they precisely tracked the animal’s behaviour and location, they used highly sensitive live microscopic techniques to compare the activity of neurons in the retrosplenial cortex and the hippocampus.

The researchers discovered a new group of cells that fire in smooth sequences as the animals run in the environment. While the activity resembled that of place cells in the hippocampus, the retrosplenial neurons responded differently to sensory inputs.

“We found these two functional cell types in the retrosplenial cortex, one devoted to spatial mapping and the other devoted to visual processing. We are now studying how these two information streams interact in the retrosplenial cortex,” Mao says.

The results show that the retrosplenial cortex carries rich spatial activity, the mechanisms of which may be partially different from that of the hippocampus. While more research is needed to investigate the relationship between retrosplenial activity and the hippocampus, the results pave the way for a better understanding of how the brain processes spatial information.

Dun Mao’s goal is to help people with memory disorders through neuroscience research

caroline.zentner — Wed, 31 May 2017 16:39:19 +0000

As a child, Dun Mao set his sights on becoming a scientist. That dream will become reality on Thursday, June 1 as he receives his doctoral degree in neuroscience during convocation ceremonies.

Originally from China, Mao started on his scientific path by obtaining a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering at Zhejiang ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. He then spent a year as a graduate student at the Buzsaki lab at Rutgers ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in New Jersey learning large-scale electrophysiology before joining the McNaughton lab at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

“The training environment here in neuroscience is one of the best in Canada and worldwide, especially in behavioural neuroscience and systems neuroscience,” says Mao. “We have several leading neuroscientists and we have a state-of-the-art research setup. We have a vibrant graduate community and all of this makes it a very good environment to do neuroscience research. I feel happy that I chose the U of L. It’s really been an unforgettable experience.”

The skills he learned while studying biomedical engineering have proved valuable in studying neuroscience, a field that increasingly requires multi-disciplinary approaches, including mathematical modelling, programming to analyze data and engineering to build research apparatuses. Mao is interested in the interactions between two regions in the brain: the hippocampus, thought to be the centre of memory, and the neocortex, thought to be involved in sensory perception, cognition, spatial reasoning and language.

Scientists believe the hippocampus is where new memories are formed. During sleep, memories get consolidated in the cortex, so there is communication between the hippocampus and the neocortex for information exchange and long-term storage of the memories. Most people find that various cues can trigger memories; scientists believe this process also depends on the hippocampus.

“I’m working on the retrosplenial cortex, a specific region in the neocortex,” says Mao. “This region is unique in that it has dense connections with the hippocampus. We chose to study this because of this unique position. It receives lots of hippocampal output so to understand the hippocampal-cortical interaction during spatial navigation or memory processing, this is the first neocortical region we would look at.”

For his doctoral work, Mao studied how the retrosplenial cortex functioned in visual processing and spatial navigation. He looked at single neuron activity in the retrosplenial cortex using a two-photon microscope.

“With this microscope, we can look at hundreds to thousands of cells simultaneously. This is important because we really need to look at the activity of lots of cells to understand what this region is doing during behaviour,” Mao says.

Using a mouse model, Mao found that neurons in the retrosplenial cortex behaved much like neurons in the hippocampus, mapping the environment and encoding a lot of visual information.

In collaboration with the Bonin lab at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Leuven in Belgium, this work was recently accepted by the journal Nature Communications and should be published in the next couple of months.

Mao’s studies at the U of L were assisted by an Alberta Innovates: Health Solutions Graduate Studentship and U of L scholarships.

“All of this allowed me to focus on my research, for which I feel very grateful,” he says.

Since defending his PhD thesis in December 2016, he has been finishing follow-up experiments. Mao will leave Lethbridge for Houston, Texas at the end of July to take a position as a post-doctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine and continue his research in a primate lab. He hopes to eventually have his own laboratory at a university.

“The problem is that there is a big gap between rodent research and primate-human research,” he says. “We understand a lot about what the hippocampus and cortex are doing but we don’t really know how we can translate that to higher order mammals. I want to bridge this gap and hopefully it can translate into better understanding of the human brain. I hope to study some of the disease models, such as Alzheimer’s disease, which is highly hippocampus-related. Hopefully this basic research in animals will help us understand humans and help us understand neurological diseases.”

When he’s not working or studying, Mao has used his time in Lethbridge to enjoy the great outdoors, including hiking, camping and snowboarding. He also enjoys playing badminton. He’s participated in the Southern Alberta Summer Games, earning a gold medal in men’s doubles and a silver medal in men’s singles.

Fulbright Visiting Professor investigates learning and memory

caroline.zentner — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 21:39:57 +0000

Humans possess different types of long-term memory and as a cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Irene Kan has conducted research into the workings of memory systems and how they might support each other in the event of a brain injury.

Kan, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Villanova ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in Pennsylvania, is at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge this semester as a Fulbright Visiting Professor and Visiting Researcher. She will be collaborating with neuroscientists at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN).

“I’m interested in human long-term memory, which can be thought of as information that we have stored away and can call back later when we need that information,” says Kan. “The approach that I have been taking over the last 10 years or so is a neuropsychological approach, which means that I look at the effects of brain damage on memory functions. I work with different types of brain injury patients, primarily those with strokes.”

Kan is interested in episodic memory and semantic memory. Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge, for example, knowing that pancakes are usually eaten for breakfast or that McDonald’s is a fast-food restaurant. Episodic memory relates more to personal experiences, such as remembering the last time one ate pancakes or visited McDonald’s.

“One thing that I’m particularly interested in is how these two types of memory interact with each other,” says Kan. “For quite a few years now, I’ve been working with patients who experience amnesia.”

Patients with amnesia tend to have impairments in episodic memory. For example, they wouldn’t be able to answer a question about what they had for dinner the previous night. However, if they were asked what the word ‘dinner’ means, they would be able to say that it’s usually the last meal of the day and eaten in the evening.

“I’m interested in understanding whether you could rely on this fairly preserved system—the semantic system—to help you with the episodic system, that is, if you can use this intact system to bootstrap this impaired system,” says Kan.

Research done in Kan’s lab and other labs has provided some evidence that semantic memory can be used to help enhance learning of the episodic system. Researchers Are hopeful that these basic science findings may have implications for therapeutic interventions in the future.

Kan says she pursued a career investigating memory because she found the subject piqued her curiosity in a way no other topic did.

“Memory has always been one of those topics that I just find fascinating,” she says. “I would pick up a paper and read about a recent experiment and I would try to think of the next natural steps. Or a relevant idea will come to mind hours later. It’s always been intellectually interesting for me. There’s still so many unanswered questions.”

While at the U of L, Kan hopes to explore the similarities and differences between animal and human models of memory.

“The faculty at the CCBN is such a strong group of neuroscientists and we have many similar interests from the perspective of memory. Many of them come at the question from an animal model, particularly rodents, and I come at the question from the human perspective. I think it’s important and interesting that we try to talk to each other,” Kan says.

In addition to learning about animal models of memory, Kan will connect with faculty in kinesiology to explore common interests in the effects of healthy aging on memory functions.

Dr. Bryan Kolb appointed Officer of the Order of Canada

caroline.zentner — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 23:22:01 +0000

Dr. Bryan Kolb (LLD ’15), one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, has been recognized for his work to increase understanding of the brain and brain development.

He is one of 100 people appointed to the Order of Canada by Gov. Gen. David Johnston on Dec. 30 and named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

“My first reaction is to be pretty overwhelmed because there’s a whole team of us here and what sets you apart is really not obvious to you. It’s pretty special, obviously. Not very many ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ are awarded these things,” says Kolb.

Kolb will receive his Officer of the Order of Canada at a ceremony to be held later this year. The Order of Canada was established in 1967 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to recognize outstanding achievement, community dedication and service to the nation.

While his first response to the news was disbelief, his second was to wonder why he had been selected, given the expertise of other team members at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN). Kolb joined the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in 1976 and is a professor of neuroscience and one of the founders, along with his friend of 50 years, Dr. Ian Whishaw (DSc ’08), of the CCBN. Kolb has built an impressive set of credentials since then, including publishing six books and writing more than 400 articles and chapters about his areas of expertise. He and Whishaw have written two textbooks, the first of which is now in its seventh edition (Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology) and the second of which is now in its fifth edition (Introduction to Brain and Behaviour).

“One of the things we did when I first came here was to write a book. I had this idea that we needed a book on how the human brain worked because there wasn’t one and I had invented a course (Human Neuropsychology) that needed a book. Whishaw initially thought we were crazy. I said this was a good thing to do and convinced him that we would not get rich but maybe famous! We had a lot of trouble getting it published because publishers said there was no such field so therefore no such course and thus, no such book. Anyway, at the end of the day, it was published by Freeman & Co and now it’s in its seventh edition and it’s in many languages and is used all over the world. So, I think that sort of started things off and changed the way we thought about our research as to how it related to the human brain rather than studying the rat brain for the rat brain. We don’t really care much about how the rat brain works except that it tells us something about ours,” he says.

Kolb’s primary interests are in brain development, brain plasticity, and brain changes over time, including after injury. These areas of inquiry gained a foothold with the public and Kolb has been asked to speak at both scientific and public gatherings across the globe. One of his most memorable talks was at a public lecture in Lac La Biche where many First Nations elders were in attendance. Kolb spoke about how stress and abuse in childhood can lead to epigenetic changes in the brain, which refers to the processes whereby certain genes are turned off or on. These epigenetic changes can be passed from one generation to another, altering the brain and behaviour of the offspring.

“One elder said ‘You’ve just given us an explanation for the problem of residential schools. Why hasn’t anybody told us that before? This makes everything different.’ I think that was the most stunning reaction I’ve received,” says Kolb.

Animal research by Kolb and colleague Dr. Robbin Gibb and their students has shown that fathers’ experiences before conception and mothers’ experiences while pregnant can change the brains of their offspring and those of subsequent generations.

“That gives us an explanation for how severe stress, for example in residential schools, could cross generations and cause all kinds of problems later. Now that we know this, we recognize a cause of the residential school effect. It’s not that that these are faulty people or losers or anything of the sort. It has a biological explanation. So how can we change this? I think the place to start is recognizing why it’s happening,” says Kolb.

Kolb’s studies with Gibb using rats have shown that tactile stimulation has the power to change the brain. Baby rats with a brain injury were stroked with a brush for 15 minutes three times a day. The skin and brain come from the same germ cell during development so the stimulation of the brush stroking the skin increased the production of chemicals which cross into the brain and had a healing effect. They have shown this to be effective in treating perinatal brain injury and believe that it could have similar benefits in treating effects of early stress and trauma.

“It’s simple-minded but it seems to be working in our lab studies and it makes sense,” says Kolb.

Kolb first became interested in the brain when he was an undergraduate student studying at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary. The field of neuroscience did not really exist yet so he was able to get into it from the beginning.

“I tell the students that until they understand what the questions about the brain are, they can’t even possibly understand what the answers are. As a student, it had never occurred to me that there was a question as to how we appreciate music. Once you understand what the question is, you say ‘How is it that we appreciate music? Why do we like music?’ And then you realize it’s got something to do with the brain. Once you start going down the ask-a-question route, you get more and more sucked in to the big picture as to how this is working and why we are the way we are. I just kept at it and kept asking questions,” says Kolb.

Kolb obtained bachelor and master degrees at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary and a doctorate at Pennsylvania State ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. He completed two post-doctoral fellowships before joining the U of L.

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, will invest 10 Officers and 34 Members into the Order of Canada during a ceremony at Rideau Hall, on Friday, November 17, 2017, at 8:30 a.m. (MDT)

Students take centre stage at annual CCBN Summer Student Symposium

caroline.zentner — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:46:13 +0000

The Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) has been a hub of research over the summer as students have studied questions about jet lag, paternal preconception alcohol exposure, the effects of chronic exposure to THC in adolescence and the effects of disrupted circadian rhythms.

Sixteen of the summer students presented their research at the annual CCBN Summer Student Symposium on Thursday, Aug. 18. A panel of judges chose the three top presentations and one honourable mention.

Dr. David Euston handed out awards following the student presentations. Clockwise from top left are Elani Bykowski, first place, Janet Poplawski, second place, Clarissa Beke, honourable mention and Jessica Kuntz, third place.

First place went to Elani Bykowski for her presentation titled Grow with the flow: visual fixations and saccades in dynamic sports environments. A saccade is a rapid eye movement in which both eyes move together in the same direction. The purpose of these movements is to quickly and accurately shift from one visual target to another.

Janet Poplawski placed second with her presentation on how early postnatal stress accelerates the functional development of the visual system. This accelerated development of the visual system was associated with maladaptive behaviours throughout life.

Capturing third place, Jessica Kuntz presented her research into the dissociation of the reach and grasp in mice.

Clarissa Beke received an honourable mention for her presentation on the brain’s left hemisphere and its grasp-to-eat advantage.

“While other students are taking summer vacation, our undergraduate and high school summer students are working hard on research projects. These students are passionate about their work and the symposium gives them the opportunity to share their enthusiasm with the CCBN community,” says Dr. David Euston, a neuroscience professor and the faculty organizer for the symposium.

The event is sponsored by the Lethbridge Public Interest Research Group (LPIRG), the Lethbridge Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience and the CCBN.

CCBN research capabilities expand with state-of-the-art optical imaging lab

caroline.zentner — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:29:03 +0000

A state-of-the-art optical imaging lab in the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) is giving ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge scientists a leg up in unlocking the secrets of how our brains function. Two-and-a-half years in the making, Mohajerani's lab is hoping to map, with outstanding precision, how the brain repairs itself after a stroke and also provide new insight into neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Having an optical imaging facility, along with the establishment of a population of transgenic mice, will allow Dr. Majid Mohajerani and his colleagues to study the mouse brain in action. This modern rodent-imaging facility is the result of a collective effort that began in 2008 with a major investment of Polaris funds from Alberta Innovates: Health Solutions and the U of L to Dr. Bruce McNaughton and with two infrastructure grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to Dr. Rob Sutherland.

Transgenic mice look like ordinary mice but they have been genetically modified. They are used in research because they carry many of the same genes as humans and can be used to study many illnesses, including neurological diseases.

“We know that some of the human brain disorders are caused by a variation or a mutation in a gene or group of genes. In the past 30 years, researchers began to insert human genes into the brain cells of living mice," says Mohajerani. "Using transgenic animals, scientists like me can now try to discover the cause of many diseases, and this may point the way to better treatment of those brain disorders."

With these developments, CCBN researchers will now be able to answer more complicated and detailed questions about what goes on in the brain after an injury like a stroke or in neurological diseases like Alzheimer's.

“One of the topics we are interested in studying is the effect of tiny, ischemic (resulting from inadequate blood supply) strokes on cognitive impairment and dementia. This type of stroke is a common feature of the aging brain. In collaboration with Dr. Rob McDonald's lab, we are studying how these small strokes could potentially drive the progression of Alzheimer's pathology and cognitive impairment. Having a transgenic animal model of Alzheimer's disease is essential to address this question," he says. "This work might potentially lead to new understanding of the link between stroke and Alzheimer's disease."

Neurons can be manipulated using genetic tools to fluoresce in different colours when exposed to light, allowing researchers to gain a better picture of what’s happening in the brain.

"Using this novel combination of genetics, optical imaging and bioengineering, we can watch thousands of neurons over the course of days and months. This will allow us to study how different parts of the brain communicate and work with each other, and how changes in brain circuitry can lead to mental disorders like Alzheimer's disease," says Mohajerani. “I have invested a lot of effort to bring our infrastructure to acceptable levels. We can consider ourselves a world-class neuroscience institution."

The equipment allows researchers to shine a light on a specific area in the brain of a transgenic mouse and activate the neurons involved in a particular function or behaviour, such as running or recalling a familiar memory. Not only will Mohajerani’s research program reveal more information about how the brain functions, but the results will also improve treatments for human patients.

“We don’t know whether the findings we make with mice are necessarily translatable to humans but we don’t have any other choice. We have to try different things and hope to see one of them get translated into actual use in humans,” he says.

Mohajerani can now see how the efforts of the past two-and-a-half years are coming together.

“This would not be possible without the talented people who work with me in this department—my colleagues who are very knowledgeable about brain function, our hard-working students and trainees, and our wonderful animal care staff.

Dr. Michael Kyweriga’s auditory research study details some of the work being done in Mohajerani’s lab.

Auditory research study to further tinnitus knowledge

caroline.zentner — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 15:29:26 +0000

In the quest to learn more about the brain and brain diseases, Dr. Majid Mohajerani has been assembling a team of researchers—three graduate students, three post-doctoral researchers, a research associate and two technicians—as he’s been building a state-of-the-art optical imaging lab.

Dr. Michael Kyweriga is one of the post-doctoral researchers and he’s investigating tinnitus. He’s currently conducting a study to determine if the parietal association area of the brain is involved in a task that requires a transgenic mouse to discriminate between two auditory tones.

Dr. Michael Kyweriga

“Many people are aware of the cocktail party effect, which is when you’re in a noisy environment and you’re talking to your friend but there’s all these distracting sounds. You are able to tune out those distracting sounds. That’s a form of attention called top-down control, where you try to suppress other inputs and pay attention to what your friend is saying. How the brain does this is not well understood,” he says.

Researchers like Kyweriga have some candidate regions of the brain that might be involved, one of them being the parietal association area. At a cocktail party, a person’s ears receive information about the sounds in the environment. The signals travel on the auditory nerves and on to the brain’s auditory cortex for further processing.

“When the signals get up into the cerebral cortex—the wrinkly, thinky part of the brain—that’s where we start assigning meaning to sounds, identifying songs or a person’s voice. Beyond that are these association areas that are now starting to draw in memories and accessing other parts of the brain that pull all this together,” says Kyweriga. “We’re trying to deal with the information as we try to listen to a friend speak and some people will close a door or put their dominant ear closer to the person to cut out other distractors.”

How people are able to direct their attention through top-down control, by willing themselves to pay attention, has eluded scientists for a long time. Some scientists have speculated that tinnitus could be a disorder of top-down control. If Kyweriga can show that the parietal association area is involved in top-down control, then he can test whether tinnitus is the result of faulty top-down control. Only with the tools in Mohajerani’s lab can these hypotheses be tested.

Kyweriga is training mice to learn whether a high- or low-frequency tone is associated with a reward. Once the mice have been sufficiently trained, a fibre optic connector is implanted close to the surface of their brains. To test his hypothesis, the mice do the auditory task again.

“While they’re doing the task and, simultaneously with them getting the sound, we’re going to turn on the blue light and that should either disrupt or enhance their neural responses to the sound,” says Kyweriga. “This is a really cool set of experiments that we’re able to do here with all the technology that we have and get to answering these long-standing questions we have in neuroscience about how our brains are able to do these type of things.”

As researchers like Kyweriga uncover more of the secrets of how the brain works, the higher is the likelihood of developing therapeutic approaches that will help people with tinnitus.

While Kyweriga uses lasers to alter the behaviour of his mice subjects, another post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Maurice Needham, uses lasers to view neuronal activity and provides expertise on the technical side of things. He’s in charge of making sure the optical equipment runs properly, including the two new shiny two-photon microscopes placed on a stainless steel table that’s suspended on air.

Dr. Maurice Needham

“The reason it’s suspended on air is to eliminate vibrations because when you have so many components working so finely, you have to ensure that any minor movements emanating from the building will be absorbed by this table. Any vibrations from the ground first have to move the heavy stainless steel table and even if that happens, the air cushion protects the stability of the tabletop and thus the images,” says Needham. “When it comes to two-photon imaging, this is probably the most advanced system you can buy.”

Needham has been at the U of L for five years and during that time he’s become more familiar with imaging systems. When the two-photon microscopes were installed, Needham watched, listened and learned so now he’s in charge of making sure they continue to work and performing any necessary repairs.

“Once Majid started increasing the amount of imaging systems here, we connected because I was interested,” he says.

While two-photon systems have been available for years, Mohajerani’s system is special. In addition to being very fast, it can simultaneously stimulate specific brain regions while viewing the subsequent response. It can also look much deeper into brain tissue than previous systems. This will be of great benefit to many experiments in Mohajerani’s lab, including Kyweriga’s work on tinnitus.

“All research requires the sharing of data. Seeing numbers and graphs is one thing but seeing pretty images is always the best. A picture is worth a thousand words,” says Needham. “We are one of only two labs in Canada with this imaging set-up, making us competitive on the world stage for neuroscience research. These systems, along with the new two-photon tomography system, will elevate this research centre’s technical abilities to compete with the best universities in the world.”

Researchers show prenatal stress influences new behavioural traits, including handedness

caroline.zentner — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 17:41:22 +0000

A new study by researchers at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, recently published in Cerebral Cortex, shows the effects of prenatal stress accumulate across generations and can affect behavioural traits, such as right- and left-handedness.

Mirela Ambeskovic, a PhD candidate working in the laboratory of Dr. Gerlinde Metz, was the lead author in a study that examined the effects of prenatal stress over four generations of rats.

Mirela Ambeskovic

“Our original idea was just to test the effects of prenatal stress on motor development to see if it affects males and females differently and whether one generation of stress would have a different effect than four generations of stress,” says Ambeskovic. “But while I was testing my animals’ fine motor skills in a reaching task, I noticed something interesting.”

Ambeskovic found that males who were in the multigenerational stress group were predominantly left-pawed, while females in the same group were both left- and right-pawed. In comparison, males whose ancestors were only exposed to stress once, either in their mothers or their great-great-grandmothers, did not show a significant increase in being left-pawed.

She and Metz, a neuroscience professor, went through previous research and found no conclusive evidence of a genetic link to handedness.

“We thought maybe it’s an epigenetic effect because these animals have been stressed and epigenetically programmed across generations,” says Ambeskovic. “We did see a difference in behaviour so the stress had negative effects on fine motor skills in males and it actually had positive effects in females. Our females were better at the reaching task than the control group which had experienced no stress.”

With the help of Dr. Bryan Kolb, also a neuroscience professor, they examined the neural structure of the brains of these male rats. The researchers found their right hemispheres — which are linked to the left paw — showed increased complexity and spine density, or more connections, in their neurons.

Dr. Gerlinde Metz

“Ancestral stress often affects males more than females,” says Ambeskovic. “It affects their behaviour and it also changes their brain organization, so we see the structural changes in the neurons and their spine density.”

Researchers don’t know what comes first, paw preference or a dominant right brain hemisphere but even so, such changes should be adaptive. Ambeskovic says ancestral stress may have a protective effect for females.

“It could be that, through epigenetics, our moms prepare us for a stressful environment that might be coming down the road and it’s more important for females to know how to cope with it as they will be the bearers of the future generation,” says Ambeskovic.

In the same way, males affected by ancestral stress might be better prepared to defend their territory because they are more adaptable, perhaps because they could be more prone to using both paws if needed, Metz adds.

“There have been studies, that for programming across generations, there’s an increase in behavioural flexibility, especially in the males. That’s what we’re seeing here. There’s more flexibility to do more tasks,” says Metz.

Ambeskovic is also looking at the effects of multigenerational stress and aging. She has found that males exposed to multigenerational stress are more susceptible to chronic diseases as they age. This study, and others, show the brain can be changed by experience and this could help pave the way to developing interventions that could change the brain in beneficial ways earlier in life.

U of L neuroscience research in the spotlight during annual Brain Awareness Week

caroline.zentner — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 20:34:07 +0000

Residents of southern Alberta are invited to learn more about the brain research being done at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) during an open house on Saturday, March 19 as part of the yearly Brain Awareness Week.

The open house from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. gives visitors the chance to explore the CCBN, tour the labs, talk to researchers and learn about the groundbreaking discoveries being made right here in southern Alberta. Youngsters will enjoy engaging in educational brain-related activities. More information is available online through the neuroscience department and in an event poster.

Dr. Matthew Tata, chair of the Department of Neuroscience, will give a free public talk on cognitive robotics and how neuroscience can be used to make robots smarter on Tuesday, March 22 at 7 p.m. in the Yates Memorial Centre.

“The idea of helpful machines that exhibit intelligent behaviours goes back at least as far as ancient Greek mythology. We now live at a time when the technology of robotics has caught up with human imagination,” says Tata.

Recent advances in robotics have been inspired by discoveries about how our own brains work. The Cognitive Robotics lab at the U of L is working at the front of this field. Tata will describe and demonstrate some of the innovations and explain how they follow from basic neuroscience research. He’ll also discuss how artificial intelligence and robotics is likely to affect our lives and communities in the future.

“We welcome everyone to take part in this year’s Brain Awareness Week activities,” says Dr. Artur Luczak, a U of L professor and neuroscience researcher, and one of the organizers of Brain Awareness Week. “CCBN researchers are happy to talk about their work, show people around the building, and answer any questions they may have.”

Brain Awareness Week is a global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research. Local activities are organized by the Lethbridge Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience.

UNews - Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience

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