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A team of researchers at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) have discovered that adult brain cell production might be determined, in part, by the early parental environment. The study suggests that dual parenting may be more beneficial than single parenting. Scientists studied mouse pups that were raised by either dual or single parents and found that adult cell production in the brain might be triggered by early life experiences. The scientists also found that the increased adult brain cell production varied based on gender. 

Researchers at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) have discovered that stress circuits in the brain undergo profound learning early in life. Using a number of cutting edge approaches, including optogenetics, Dr. Jaideep Bains and colleagues have shown stress circuits are capable of self-tuning following a single stress. These findings demonstrate that the brain uses stress experience during early life to prepare and optimize for subsequent challenges.

HBI member Dr. Tom Feasby is part of a team of researchers investigating the appropriateness of lower-back and head MRIs and have concluded many requests for these scans are not needed. In a joint study led by the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, using methodology developed at the RAND Corporation, 2,000 requisitions for magnetic resonance imaging scans placed in Edmonton and Ottawa were examined to determine if they were appropriate.

A study by researchers at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) reported early-life inflammation can lead to long-lasting molecular changes and increased excitability in the adult rat brain. Led by Aylin Reid as part of her PhD thesis, the study was conducted jointly in the labs of Dr. Quentin Pittman and Dr. Cam Teskey, Reid’s supervisors, and co-authored by Pittman, Teskey and Dr. Kiarash Riazi.

Leading sports medicine researcher and HBI member Dr. Willem Meeuwisse is the co-author of a just-published international report that offers a consensus view among scientists and doctors about the treatment of concussion. The report was co-published simultaneously in the April 2013 issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine and the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine.

Children at risk of bipolar and related mood disorders can develop serious substance abuse as young as 14, says a new study by Dr. Anne Duffy, the holder of the Campus Alberta Innovates Program (CAIP) Professorship in Child and Youth Mental Health at The Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education, Hotchkiss Brain Institute and professor of Psychiatry.

A high-resolution electroencephalography (EEG) lab run by HBI full member Dr. Andrea Protzner, assistant professor in psychology, has been set up thanks to a Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant. The lab will be used to understand how cognitive operations emerge from brain function in the intact and impaired brain. Protzner’s research will examine brain networks in healthy individuals, people with major depressive disorder, and people with medial temporal lobe epilepsy.

Approximately three in 100 Canadians will experience psychosis—a mental disorder in which a breakdown between thoughts and emotions causes people to lose touch with reality. Given its impact on society, 
the HBI has developed a Depression and Psychosis Translational Research Program at the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education. One of
 the program’s core members,
 Dr. Jean Addington, is helping distinguish the HBI as a leader 
in mental health research with an early psychosis research project.

A study from the Hotchkiss Brain Institute shows there is evidence to support a new drug therapy called nabilone to treat diabetic neuropathy, or nerve pain. Researchers enrolled 60 patients with diabetic neuropathy in a 12-week placebo controlled clinical study. At the end of the study, patients reported less pain and an improvement in sleep and anxiety when taking nabilone as compared to the placebo.

A team of Canadian scientists and clinicians, led by Dr. Michael Hill of the Calgary Stroke Program at Foothills Medical Centre and the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), have demonstrated that a neuroprotectant drug, developed by Dr. Michael Tymianski at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre, located at the Toronto Western Hospital, protects the human brain against the damaging effects of stroke.