Researchers now have a new, more refined tool, the Polygenic-Risk-Score (PRS) on Spark, to help them understand an individual’s genetic risk for common illnesses, including mental illnesses. In an initial validation study, the newly developed software package successfully generated a polygenic risk score for a cohort of Canadian women that explained and predicted more of […]
Smoking thins vital part of brain
Years ago, children were warned that smoking could stunt their growth, but now a major study by an international team including the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University and the University of Edinburgh shows new evidence that long-term smoking could cause thinning of the brain’s cortex. The cortex is the outer layer of the brain […]
Unique brain “fingerprint” can predict drug effectiveness
Technique can be used to better categorize patients with neurological disease, according to their therapeutic needs Personalized medicine – delivering therapies specially tailored to a patient’s unique physiology – has been a goal of researchers and doctors for a long time. New research provides a way of delivering personalized treatments to patients with neurological disease. […]
How emotions can affect childbirth, CTV interview
When it comes to maternal mental health, sadly, Canada lags behind other countries, like Australia and the UK, where pre- and post-natal mental health are subject to regular screening. Listen to CTV’s News at Noon, where Dr Kieran O’Donnell discussed the impact of prenatal anxiety and depression on the mother’s and the child’s long-term mental health with news […]
Separating children from parents can negatively affect brain development, CBC interview
Those administering policies that separate children from their parents clearly don’t understand the effects of early childhood trauma on the developing brain. In an interview with Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald, Dr Michael Meaney explains how parents insulate their children from stresses while their brains mature. When children are traumatically separated from parents their brain is forced to […]
LUDMER CENTRE TAKES OPEN SCIENCE TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Since arriving at McGill and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital more than 30 years ago, Alan Evans has helped the University and its network of affiliated hospitals build one of the world’s largest infrastructures of neuroscience research – from the high-resolution Big Brain atlas to supercomputing data-storage technology. These developments and others by his fellow researchers […]
McGill University and GPU.one join forces in push for neuroscience breakthroughs
Company will provide McGill’s Ludmer Research Centre with Big-Data processing capacity McGill University’s Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health has formed a collaboration with GPU.one, a Montreal-based private data colocation centre that will provide the Ludmer Centre’s neuroinformatics team at the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (MCIN), with access to graphics-processing-unit (GPU) computational capacity, […]
Why Maternal Mental Health Matters, Q&A with Dr K. O’Donnell
May 2, 2018 is World Maternal Mental Health Day Organizations around the world — from Canada, the UK, the USA, Turkey, Australia, Argentina, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Germany, Nigeria, and more — are leading efforts to raise awareness about maternal mental health through a collective social media push and in-country events. In response to the call, […]
Livestreaming World Maternal Mental Health Day symposium
World Maternal Mental Health Day 2018 – Begin Before Birth Canada Symposium Due to popular demand, we are live-streaming our Maternal Mental Health Matters symposium. On May 1st, 2018 visit the NEURO hospital’s YouTube channel to participate in the symposium from 9AM-5PM. Note: access will only be available from 9am to 5pm at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvrUuEvxOsXxq9-T3B9liyQ/live ) Download the PDF program or visit the […]
Women Entering STEM, Our Advice
On March 8th, International Women’s Day ( #IWD2018 ), we are being challenged to commit to a “gender parity mindset” via progressive action on how we will press for progress (#PressforProgress ). In our article Women in Science @ the Ludmer Centre, we highlighted some of the challenges and funding obstacles women confront in the […]