Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health | DMCBH

UBC Kickstart Updates
2025-02-07 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Vancouver) | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Jackson Schumacher: Fiber photometry and optogenetic investigation of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic regulation of risk/reward decision making
2025-02-07 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Jackson Schumacher from the Neural Circuits and Cognition Lab.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

Dr. Dorothy Schafer: Microglia-astrocyte crosstalk governing synapse remodeling
2025-02-14 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Microglia and astrocytes have been implicated in remodeling synapses, but whether and how these cells coordinate to remodel synapses remain open questions. Here, we have identified key mechanistic underpinnings by which microglia instruct astrocytes to modify their synaptic coverage to enable synapse removal. We are further identifying how the degree of astrocyte synapse ensheathment can dictate windows of plasticity to enable microglia-mediated synapse remodeling in health and disease.

Elena Greenall: Impacts of psilocybin and the 5-HT2A antagonist M100,907 on behaviours in the cued rat Gambling Task
2025-02-14 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Elena Greenall from the Laboratory of Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

Dr. Caroline Menard: Neurovascular adaptations underlie stress vulnerability vs resilience in mice and human depression
2025-02-21 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Our research program aims to shed light on the biological mechanisms underlying stress vulnerability vs resilience, with help of state-of-the-art photonic technology, in order to develop innovative treatments and identify biomarkers of mood disorders. Our multidisciplinary approach combines behavioral experiments to functional, cellular, molecular, and imaging studies and validation of our rodent findings in human samples. We showed that chronic stress exposure promotes blood-brain barrier hyperpermeability leading to passage of circulating inflammatory mediators into the brain and the establishment of depressive behaviors. These changes occur in a sex-specific manner which may contribute to sex differences in depression prevalence, symptoms and treatment responses.

Daria Oleinichenko: Role of the PAG signaling in opioid withdrawal-induced hyperalgesia
2025-02-21 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Daria Oleinichenko from the Phillips and Snutch Labs.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

The Relationship Between Pain and Opioids and its Role in Opioid Use Disorder
2025-02-24 15:30 - 17:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
This month, Jane Kim, from UBC Psychiatry/Vancouver General Hospital will present “The Relationship Between Pain and Opioids and its Role in Opioid Use Disorder.”
Zoom link if unable to attend in person:
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/5936706150?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 593 670 6150
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dr. Beatriz Rico and Dr. Oscar Marin
2025-02-27 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Speaker: Dr. Beatriz Rico, King’s College London
Title: Assembly of cortical neurons in a dynamic circuit
In our daily life, animal behaviours rely on precise connectivity between neurons in the brain that can be modulated by experience. In the mammalian cerebral cortex, these connections reach an extraordinary complexity. How are these cortical circuitries built? How they respond to activity and what happens when they fail during development are questions that we are currently addressing in my lab. In this seminar, I will focus on the precise integration of diverse neuronal populations during development, regulated by intrinsic molecular mechanisms and dynamic fine-tuning mechanisms that maintain the balance between excitation and inhibition. For instance, the development of excitatory pyramidal cells is simultaneously and precisely counterbalanced by the formation of inhibitory synapses during the maturation of neuronal circuits. Although this process relies on neuronal activity, different types of pyramidal cells likely respond to changes in activity through the expression of cell-specific genes.

Speaker: Dr. Oscar Marin, King’s College London
Title: Maturation and plasticity of cortical interneurons
GABAergic interneurons play crucial roles in regulating neuronal activity in the cerebral cortex. A hallmark of cortical interneurons is their remarkable structural and functional diversity, yet the molecular determinants and the precise timing underlying their diversification remain largely unknown. The search for mechanisms controlling the diversity of GABAergic interneurons has primarily focused on transcriptional programs driving the initial specification of different types of interneurons. However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms regulating their terminal differentiation. In this talk, I will describe molecular mechanisms controlling the maturation and plasticity of PV+ interneurons, a subclass of cortical interneurons that is particularly vulnerable across a broad spectrum of psychiatric disorders.

Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dr. Boris Heifets: Psychedelics, anesthesia and dreaming
2025-02-28 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

In this lecture, I will discuss our group’s efforts to deconstruct the psychedelic ‘state’, drawing on both human and mouse experiments. While dreaming, anesthesia and psychedelics are often considered distinct, I argue that they share an underlying physiology, phenomenology and possibly therapeutic effect.

Michelle Jung: Effects of maternal sucrose consumption during pregnancy on maternal and fetal glucocorticoids
2025-02-28 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Michelle Jung from the Soma lab.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/61318867702?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 613 1886 7702
Passcode: [REDACTED]

If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

Dr. Alex Kwan: Making synapses with psychedelics
2025-03-07 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Numerous drugs have the ability to alter our perception, cognition, and mood. Some of these compounds, such as ketamine and serotonergic psychedelics, have also shown promise as treatment for mental illnesses. The behavioral effects are often long-lasting, presumably because the drugs act on synapses and dendrites to induce plasticity in the brain. In this talk, I will describe a series of studies from my lab aimed at understanding the mechanism of action of psilocybin, using subcellular-resolution two-photon imaging, in vivo electrophysiology, rabies viral tracing, and other molecular and behavioral approaches in mice. The results provide insights into the drug action of psychedelics on neural circuits.

Alex Yu: Multiple neuropeptides underlie different forms of behavioural facilitation
2025-03-07 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Alex Yu from the Behavioural Neurogenetics Lab.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

Dr. Anita Devineni: Neural processing for flexible feeding behaviors in Drosophila
2025-03-14 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

How does the brain process sensory information to generate adaptive behaviors that are innate, yet flexible? My lab investigates this question in the taste system of the fruit fly Drosophila, which offers unique tools to study how individual neurons contribute to neural circuit computations and behavior. First, I will discuss our work using optogenetics, behavior, calcium imaging, and connectomic analyses to investigate how taste circuits transform sensory signals into motor actions. Second, I will discuss a project that bridges experimental and theoretical approaches to understand how flies make foraging decisions. Through these studies, we hope to uncover principles of neural processing that generalize across species.

Dr. Graham Collingridge: Glutamate receptors and synaptic plasticity in health and disease.
2025-03-21 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Working in the laboratory of the late Hugh McLennan (Department of Physiology, UBC) Stephen Kehl and I discovered that NMDA receptors trigger the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus. Since these early experiments, the roles of glutamate receptors and their associated signalling processes have been extensively studied. I will provide an overview of the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus and how this information is being used to understand the molecular basis of, and to develop treatments for, a wide variety of brain disorders. In this respect, I will summarise some of our recent work in the areas of neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases.

Brittany Docolas: Intranasal administration of estradiol to increase motivation to exercise in rats
2025-03-21 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Brittany Docolas from the Soma Laboratory.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy findings in Bipolar disorder: Do they predict recurrences?
2025-03-24 15:30 - 17:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
This month, Dr. Chithra Pream Raju from UBC Psychiatry/Richmond Hospital will present “Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy findings in Bipolar disorder: Do they predict recurrences?”
Zoom link if unable to attend in person:
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/5936706150?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 593 670 6150
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dr. Anne Churchland: Movements and engagement during perceptual decision-making
2025-03-28 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Switching between cognitive states is a natural tendency, even for trained experts. To test how cognitive state impacts the relationship between neural activity and behavior, we measured cortex-wide neural activity during decision-making in mice. Task variables and instructed movements elicited similar neural responses regardless of state, but the neural activity associated with spontaneous, uninstructed movements became highly variable during disengagement. Surprisingly, this heightened variability was not due to an increase in movements: behavioral videos showed equally frequent movements in both cognitive states. But while the movement frequency remained similar, movement timing changed: as animals slipped into disengagement, their movements became erratically timed. These idiosyncratic movements were a strong predictor of task performance and drove increased variance in neural activity. Our results argue that movements constitute an embodied signature of cognitive state. These observations lay the foundation for future large-scale recording experiments in freely moving animals that we will conduct using novel tools that we have recently developed.

Anna Mazurenko: Direct measurement of free glucocorticoids in rodent serum using ultrafiltration and LC-MS/MS
2025-03-28 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Anna Mazurenko from the Soma Laboratory.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

UBC Giving Day 2025
2025-04-03 | Online
Join us for the fifth annual UBC Giving Day on Thursday, April 3. This year, the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health has been selected as 1 of 4 focus areas for the Faculty of Medicine.
Brain health is at a critical crossroads—conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and depression are on the rise, yet cutting-edge research remains underfunded. The Centre is dedicated to driving breakthroughs in prevention, personalized therapies and treatments—but we need your help.
Your support will advance a new era of brain health by helping researchers fast-track life-changing discoveries that could improve the lives of millions.
Donate and make your impact today

Dr. Sophie Caron: The ecological mind — making sense of the world with a tiny brain
2025-04-04 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Brains are evolved to learn, enabling animals to respond flexibly to an unpredictable world and to draw on experience to guide future behaviors. To learn efficiently, brains need to balance a high degree of flexibility in the representation of the outside world with the limited neuronal infrastructure available to them. Focusing on the Drosophila melanogaster olfactory system, my research investigates how the neuronal circuits that enable efficient learning are pre-configured to interpret the world. In my presentation, I will explore two key questions: First, what are the neural pre-configurations that allow the brain to learn efficiently from the environment? Second, how are these pre-configurations shaped by the ecological conditions in which brains evolve? Using a wide range of approaches — from neurogenetics and behavioral assays to cross-species comparisons and the study of species interactions — we reveal the subtle ways in which ecology shapes neuronal circuit architecture and function.

Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta: Structure and meaning in natural behavior
2025-04-11 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Ethologists describing animals in the wild have long appreciated that naturalistic, self-motivated behavior is built from modules that are linked together over time into predictable sequences. Many such sequences are built to extract information from the environment. And yet, it remains unclear how the brain regulates the selection of individual behavioral modules for expression at any given moment, or how it dynamically composes these modules into the fluid behaviors observed when animals act of their own volition, and in the absence of experimental restraint, task structure or explicit reward. Here we use novel methods for characterizing spontaneous mouse behavior — combined with neural recordings and closed-loop manipulations — to reveal mechanisms used by the brain to create the architecture of self-guided behavior. I will describe recent results in which we explain behavioral variation across timescales ranging from milliseconds to millennia.

Career Paths in Translational Research (MATRIX-N Trainee Mentorship Session)
2025-04-14 14:00 - 15:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
In this trainee mentorship session organized by UBC’s MATRIX-N cluster, a multidisciplinary panel of preclinical, clinical, and industry researchers/experts, including Dr. Catharine Winstanley (UBC Psychology), Dr. Brittany Dennis (UBC Psychiatry) and Mr. Karim Lalji (Pharmaceutical Exec), will discuss different career paths in translational research and answer your questions. All students, trainees, and early-career researchers welcome! Food and refreshments will be provided.
Zoom link:
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/5936706150?pwd=[REDACTED]

Dr. Simon Chen: Probing the temporal dynamics of noradrenaline release at fine spatial scales during motor learning in healthy and diseased brains
2025-04-25 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Noradrenaline (NA) is a strong modulator of neuronal activity, and many symptoms in patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be attributed to the maladaptive activity of locus coeruleus (LC), the main source of forebrain NA; hence, it has garnered much attention as a potential lens through which to view and understand ASD. Our lab recently uncovered a role for dysregulated LC-NA function in motor learning delays in the 16p11.2 deletion mouse model of ASD (Yin et al., Nature Neuroscience 2021). We found that reduced NA levels in the primary motor cortex (M1) caused delays in motor learning and increased neuronal activity in pyramidal neurons (PNs) of M1 in 16p11.2 deletion mice. Strikingly, both the behavioral and neuronal phenotypes were rescued by chemogenetic activation of LC-NA.
In order to fully characterize the local dynamic NA levels during learning in the 16p11.2 deletion mice, we employ a newly developed optical NA sensor, GRABNE, with in vivo two-photon imaging to visualize the spatiotemporal release patterns of NA in M1 during motor learning. Intriguingly, we find that while wild-type (WT) mice exhibit consistently elevated NA levels during movements, 16p11.2 deletion mice show a delay in behaviorally induced NA increases. In addition to the delay in temporal dynamics, 16p11.2 deletion mice show altered spatial dynamics, with sparser and less behavior-specific NA release across M1 during the initial learning. In addition, we also assess the LC-NA axonal neuronal activity in M1 using in vivo Ca2+ imaging. We also observe that behavior-related activity transients are less reliable in 16p11.2 deletion mice with more unspecific activity transients during the baseline period. Intriguingly, pharmacological and closed loop optogenetic manipulations that disrupt the spatial and temporal specificity of NA release, respectively, in M1 were sufficient to induce delayed motor learning in WT mice. Our results offer new insights into the temporal dynamics of NA release at fine spatial scales within one brain region and how the specificities are critical for motor skill acquisition.

Nikolas Kokan: Understanding the impact of timing on habituation
2025-04-25 15:00 - 16:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Join us for the UBC Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars (BNS), a lecture series featuring DMCBH trainees and professors in a casual setting. Talks take place from 3-4 pm every Friday in DMCBH 3402A-C and on Zoom. RSVP is not required.
This week’s speaker is Nikolas Kokan from the Behavioural Neurogenetics Lab.
Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62773707502?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 627 7370 7502
Passcode: [REDACTED]
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders each week, please email Melody Salehzadeh (msalehzadeh@zoology.ubc.ca) and/or Jackson Schumacher (schumacher@psych.ubc.ca).

Informing treatment strategies for addressing the opioid epidemic using pharmacometrics
2025-04-28 15:30 - 17:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
This month, Sahithi Thotakura and Dr. Anil Maharaj from UBC Pharmaceutical Sciences will present “Informing treatment strategies for addressing the opioid epidemic using pharmacometrics.”
Zoom link if unable to attend in person:
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/5936706150?pwd=[REDACTED]

Dr. Sarah Morrow: Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis:The importance of integrating research findings into clinical practice.
2025-05-02 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

The objectives of this talk are to:

Understand the importance of identifying cognitive complaints and cognitive impairment in persons with MS;
Understand the impact cognition can have on persons with MS;
Consider how cognition symptoms can be addressed in clinical settings

Dr. Julie Lefebvre: Molecular strategies for wiring neurons into circuits
2025-05-09 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

A critical step in neural circuit assembly is the integration of inhibitory interneurons with exquisite specificity in their numbers, distribution and synaptic connectivity. Our lab aims to identify cellular and molecular mechanisms that generate interneuron diversity and specify their precise wiring patterns in retinal and brain circuits in mouse models. I will present our work on the roles of Cadherin superfamily recognition molecules in regulating inhibitory interneuron development and wiring, as well as a toolkit we are developing to map trans-neuronal interactions and connectivity in vivo.

Dr. Cheryl Wellington: New CFI funded Core Facility
2025-05-16 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dr. Wellington will be introducing a new CFI funded Core Facility that will focus on fluid biomarkers relevant to clinical neurology and fundamental neuroscience.

KK-103, a novel prodrug of leu-enkephalin for antinociception and mood-improving
2025-05-26 15:30 - 17:00 | DMCBH Room 3402, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
This month, Dr. Shyh-Dar Li from UBC Pharmaceutical Sciences will present “KK-103, a novel prodrug of leu-enkephalin for antinociception and mood-improving.”
Zoom link if unable to attend in person:
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/5936706150?pwd=[REDACTED]

Dr. Pinar Ayata: Neurodegenerative functions of microglia in Alzheimer's disease
2025-05-30 11:00 - 12:00 | Rudy North Lecture Theatre, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z3, Canada
Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
Meeting ID: 91512 289258
Passcode: [REDACTED]

The brain’s primary immune cells, microglia, are a leading causal cell type in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Yet, the mechanisms by which microglia can drive neurodegeneration remain unresolved. Here, we discover that a conserved stress signaling pathway, the integrated stress response (ISR), characterizes a microglia subset with neurodegenerative outcomes. Autonomous activation of ISR in microglia is sufficient to induce early features of the ultrastructurally distinct “dark microglia” linked to pathological synapse loss. In AD models, microglial ISR activation exacerbates neurodegenerative pathologies and synapse loss while its inhibition ameliorates them. Mechanistically, we present evidence that ISR activation promotes the secretion of toxic lipids by microglia, impairing neuron homeostasis and survival in vitro. Accordingly, pharmacological inhibition of ISR or lipid synthesis mitigates synapse loss in AD models. Our results demonstrate that microglial ISR activation represents a neurodegenerative phenotype, which may be sustained, at least in part, by the secretion of toxic lipids.
