Dr. Wafaa Zaaraoui: In Vivo ²³Na MRI: Unveiling Sodium Homeostasis in Brain Function and Neurological Disorders

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

Zoom option if unable to attend in person: Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”) Meeting ID: 91512 289258 Passcode: 289258 Sodium (²³Na) MRI is a powerful tool for investigating sodium homeostasis in the brain, offering a unique, non-invasive method to study in vivo changes in sodium concentrations in both healthy and pathological conditions. Sodium plays […]


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Dr. Bence Olveczky: Neural circuits underlying learned motor sequences.

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

Our ability to sequence movements and actions in response to unpredictable environmental events underlies our rich and adaptive behavioral repertoire. Such flexible behaviors contrast with overtrained, or automatic, motor sequences directed at specific tasks and executed the same way every time. We probed how neural circuits underlie these distinct forms of motor sequence execution by […]


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Dr. Matthew Hill: Amygdalar Regulation of Neuroendocrine and Behavioral Responses to Threat and Stress

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

While the basolateral amygdala (BLA)  is known to be a highly stress sensitive region of the brain, there is surprisingly little understanding of the role the BLA plays in the orchestration of a stress response. The first portion of this talk will focus on the role of the BLA in regulating neuroendocrine responses to stress, […]


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Dr. Andrienne Antonson: Blueprint for the Developing Brain: Cues from Microbes, Myeloid Cells, and the Maternal-Fetal Interface

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

Emerging evidence suggests that key neurodevelopmental processes are shaped by immune and microbial signals during the prenatal period. My work is based on the premise that disruptions to these signals can alter neurodevelopmental trajectories and increase vulnerability to lifelong mental health disorders. Using a clinically translatable mouse model of maternal influenza infection, we demonstrate that […]


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Dr. Erik Bloss: Synapse plasticity in learning and disease states

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

Synapses are the computational subunits of the brain. They allow cell-type specific forms of information flow, permit neurons to compartmentalize electrical and biochemical signals, and undergo rapid structural plasticity during experience. Although Crick suggested spine plasticity was a correlate of memory more than 40 years ago, it has been hard to understand precisely how the […]


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Dr. Michael Yellow Bird: The Power of Ceremony: Indigenous Contemplative Practices, Neurodecolonization, and the Medicine Wheel

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

Indigenous contemplative practices and teachings have enabled Indigenous Peoples to develop an important paradigm of healing that has important implications for western medicine and health care providers who work with […]


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Dr. Bruce Pike: MRI Guided Transcranial Focused Ultrasound

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

The integration of MRI and transcranial focused ultrasound represents a disruptive technology that has many potential applications.  This seminar will provide an overview of a new research program I established in […]


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Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang: Longitudinal neurodevelopmental correlates of mid-adolescents’ psychosocial processing: A path to young adult wellbeing?

Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver

Combining open-ended interviews (outside the scanner) with structural, trial-by-trial, and resting-state functional MRI neuroimaging, we examined real-time functional neural dynamics underlying diverse urban mid-adolescents’ cognitive and emotional engagement with compelling […]


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