It is well-known that as males age, testosterone levels in their blood decrease and their cognitive function declines. Testosterone is a type of hormone known as an androgen which functions by binding to an androgen receptor. Androgens play important roles in cognition, which means it’s possible that age-related declines in testosterone contribute to changes in cognition as males age.
Newsroom
For media enquiries or more information about research at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, please contact Vanessa Hrvatin, Communications Coordinator.
- Email: vanessa.hrvatin@ubc.ca
- Phone: 604-827-4295
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Pictured (left to right): Drs. Fabio Rossi, Freda Miller and Brian MacVicar have joined forces to better characterize an understudied part of the brain.
It was nearly two years into one of her projects that Dr. Lin Luo (pictured) realized something wasn’t right. She had been using the Cre-loxP system—an approach frequently used to knock out gene expression in specific cell types in mice and other animals—to study functions of the Calsyntenin-3 protein. After months of troubleshooting, she realized the gene wasn’t just being knocked out in specific brain tissues as she had hoped. Instead, every tissue in the mouse—from head to tail—was losing the gene.
A new study is the first to show how information is rerouted in the brain following concussion in adolescents. It’s known that after a brain injury the number of connections in the brain increases and the flow of information changes. But until now, it was unclear exactly how the information flow was being altered post-concussion.
Pictured: Dr. Kozlowski with the Philips Elition 3T-MRI housed in the Charles E. Fipke Integrated Neuroimaging Suite.
Dr. Piotr Kozlowski has been appointed to the role of Director, UBC MRI Research Centre after Dr. Alex MacKay stepped down at the end of 2019. Dr. Kozlowski had been Associate Director since the Centre was established 2005.
Pictured: Melanie Bertrand (left) and Julia Boyle (right), both Lab Managers and Sustainability Coordinators for the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health.
New research is always exciting, but in order to spread the word about new findings, papers need to be accepted and published in academic journals. The number of citations a researcher has under their belt from these publications is one way they’re judged when it comes to academic opportunities like grant applications. Despite the wide-spread use of citation metrics, they’re often misused and there’s a lot of confusion around how they should be interpreted.
Pictured: participants in an exercise study participate in a group class. Image credit: Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.
Dr. Naznin Virji-Babul (pictured) has been appointed Senior Advisor to the Provost on Women and Gender-Diverse Faculty. The announcement was made January 16, 2020, by Dr. Andrew Szeri, Provost and Vice-President, Academic. The role was previously held by Dr. Jennifer Love.
A study that analyzed information from death certificates issued in British Columbia over a nearly 30-year period has identified consistencies in records where multiple sclerosis (MS) was listed as a cause of death, offering clinically relevant insight into the reasons why people with MS have a shorter life expectancy on average than people who do not have MS.
