A new tool, with further testing, may help clinicians rule out a history of mild head traumas as a causal factor in former athletes presenting with abnormal cognitive decline. Collectively, athletes in high-impact sports suffer up to 3.8 million sports concussions annually, leaving them vulnerable to long-term cognitive damage that only becomes apparent as they […]
New research highlights the limitations of using standard birth-weight cutoffs to define long-term vulnerability. Children born too small or too large are at increased risk for several diseases later in life, including metabolic and mental-health problems. Early identification is important to initiating proper and close follow-up; however, Ludmer Centre researchers and collaborators led by […]
Diseases and mental illnesses that manifest across our lifetime may be linked to our body’s ability to fight off infections through fever – or febrile response – a potent mechanism for combating infection. Based on a growing body of evidence, we now know that childhood adversity and inflammation both play critical roles in the diseases […]
New research provides insight into how a profound remodeling of cell morphology in a specific brain region —the medial preoptic area (MOPA)— might relate to individual differences in maternal behavior. Both pregnancy hormones and pup sensory stimuli increase neuronal activation leading to a remodeling of neuronal circuits within certain brain regions, including the MPOA, that […]
Could a genetic variant in our DNA decrease susceptibility to stress and overeating? Glucocorticoids, which are linked to overeating, regulate our body’s energy supply in response to stress. Ludmer Centre researcher Dr Patricia P Silveira and colleagues from research institutes in Brazil, Toronto and Montreal found that adolescents who carry an A3669G variant of the […]
Do you remember what you had for dinner last night? The hippocampus, a brain structure linked to memory formation, participates in this mental process. Memory impairment, such as an inability to remember what you ate, is an early sign of hippocampal damage due to insulin resistance, which itself further disrupts a person’s feeding patterns. […]
If Canadians living with a mental illness could access better treatments, annually upwards of 352,000 Canadians living with depression or anxiety could re-enter the workforce as productive employees. “This highlights the fact that there is a [return on investment], there is a gain for the employer in acting on mental health in the workplace,” said […]
McGill University will launch an ambitious effort to advance understanding of the human brain and ease the burden of neurological and mental-health disorders, thanks to an $84 million, seven-year grant announced today under the federal government’s Canada First Excellence Research Fund (CFREF). Totaling over $213 million across three institutions – Montreal will be one of […]
Women who reported higher levels of childhood adversity combined with higher levels of self-reported depressive symptoms are significantly more likely to live in low socio-economic environments. A new collaborative study, which included Ludmer Centre researchers A. Bouvette-Turcot, E. Unternaehrer, H. Gaudreau and M. Meaney, suggest that Socio-economic status is influenced by a life-course-pathway that begins […]
Are you are in Dublin on August 31st? Dr O’Donnell is giving a keynote address at “Preparing for Life: The Results” Ireland’s longest running random control study of an early intervention programme. Read more