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HBI member, Vina Goghari’s research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder has won her recognition from the Canadian government in the form of a prestigious Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Investigator Award.

Given to Canada’s brightest young researchers in the early stage of their careers, the New Investigator Award is a salary award providing select scholars with $60,000 a year for a five year period. The award protects 75 per cent of Goghari’s time for research.

HBI researcher, Naweed Syed, PhD and Orly Yadid-Pecht, PhD from the Schulich School of Engineering have achieved a major milestone in the further development of a neurochip-a microchip with the ability to monitor several functions of the brain. In previous studies, researchers developed a neurochip that could directly stimulate and record brain cell activity. Now, these two researchers have successfully developed a novel lab-on-a-chip technology that, through an ultra-sensitive component built directly on the microchip, also enables direct imaging of activity in brain cells. 

If you’ve ever had a car accident or severe fall, there’s a chance you’ve suffered some degree of brain trauma. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when the head receives an impact forceful enough to injure the brain. It’s the leading cause of injury and death in otherwise healthy young Canadians, striking without warning and leaving damage that can last a lifetime.  Dr. David Zygun knows better than most just how destructive brain trauma can be...

 We are all familiar with the unpleasant physical symptoms of stress – things like headache, irritability, and fatigue – which all stem from activity in our brain. The ability to respond to stress is an essential survival tool. However, when the stress system responds inappropriately, it can lead to mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety disorders. HBI researcher Dr. Jaideep Bains is working to understand…

HBI member, Dr. Giuseppe Iaria and graduate students Aiden Arnold and Clayton Ford Burles have created an opportunity for members of the public to directly engage in scientific research and impact the lives of children living with spatial orientation difficulties.

By engaging members of the public in crowd-funding, their new funding model allows members of the public to browse through scientific research projects from around the world. By visiting scifundchallenge.org the public can select a project and donation amount to play an active role in making scientific research happen.

To read the full story click here.

Hotchkiss Brain Institute researcher Dr. Sarah McFarlane studies how nerve cell projections, or axons, navigate through the developing brain, in preparation for their role in signal transmission. Her team discovered one of the mechanisms the brain uses to control that navigation.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, involve a special group of nerve cells, or neurons, called retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), whose role is to receive visual information from the eye and process it before sending it on to the brain.

The Calgary Herald weaves together a story that bridges compassion with science for issues relating to mental health. The article posits that, "someone fighting cancer is seen as a hero. Someone fighting depression is seen as “damaged” or “troubled.” Why this disconnect?" To find out more click here to read the article featuring HBI member, Dr. Frank MacMaster.

It’s been almost a decade since HBI member, Dr. Samuel Wiebe, helped change the way doctors around the world treat people with temporal lobe epilepsy. His successful clinical trial at the turn of the century proved that surgery can actually cure some patients, releasing them from a lifetime of drugs and treatment. Molly Visentin was one such patient. And now, because of a generous donation, further research into her form of the disease will be made possible.

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Research at the HBI has demonstrated the novel expression of an ion channel in Purkinje cells – specialized neurons in the cerebellum, the area of the brain responsible for movement.  Dr. Ray W. Turner, Professor in the Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy and PhD student Jordan Engbers and colleagues published this finding in the January edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Researchers have discovered a pathway that may contribute to the symptoms related to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, collectively known as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). This research is a major milestone in developing future drug therapies for those living with these debilitating disorders.