How stress shapes the brain. Rosemary C. Bagot
Channel: Ludmer Centre
Date: 2021-01-20

Road to 200: Can big data help explain how our brains work? 

Dr Rosemary Bagot, the 1st presenter, delivered the talk: How stress shapes the brain. 

As part of the McGill’s Road to 200 activities, McGill scientists challenged themselves to relay their brain research in a concise and approachable way to an audience of about 200 who gathered at Montreal’s Phi Centre on November 13, 2018. For information on free lectures visit http://ludmercentre.ca/events Five researchers, five-to-ten-minute presentations 

1. How stress shapes the brain: Rosemary Bagot, William Dawson Scholar and Assistant Professor of Psychology, explained that her research team studies the role of stress in depression. “Large datasets collected from animals help us identify patterns in how stress is affecting the brain,” she said. Because not everyone reacts to stress in the same way, they also study the brains of resilient mice to find out what protects them from the effects of stress. 

2. Why maternal mental health matters: Kieran O’Donnell, Assistant Professor in Epigenetics and Epidemiology in Psychiatry, explained that one in five women experience a perinatal mental health problem, most commonly anxiety or depression. He and his team look at both maternal mental health and how it affects offspring. “We’re trying to understand why some children are affected and others are not,” said O’Donnell. 

3. IQ and the brain across our lifespan: Sherif Karama, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, explained that data tells us that brain volume, cortical thickness and quality of white matter all predict IQ. That means scientists are closer to being able to estimate IQ based on a brain scan, which Karama admitted, “scares me too.” While IQ can be stable, it can also change. As one example, schoolchildren in special programs have shown increased IQ. 

4. Transdisciplinary big-data researchers: tomorrow’s innovators: Celia Greenwood, Professor in the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology and Co-director of the Ludmer Centre, wants to “transform the data deluge into a manageable information flow.” One way she’s doing that is by developing the researchers of the future: training mathematicians and statisticians in the life sciences or neurosciences as necessary, and also helping researchers in neurosciences or life sciences improve their data skills. 

5. Towards a Global Brain Consortium: Alan Evans, James McGill Professor in Neurology and Neurosurgery and Co-director of the Ludmer Centre, explained that increasingly science is thinking of brain disorders as distributed entities or a consequence of wiring or connectivity disorders, rather than as focal disorders like a stroke or a tumour. This involves thinking of the brain as a “connectome,” a model that focuses on the connections between each neuron. “This characterization of the brain as a connectome revolutionizes how we think about it,” said Evans. 

The event celebrated the latest $10-million gift from the Irving Ludmer Family Foundation to the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health. Initiated in 2013, the Ludmer Centre is a collaboration between the Douglas Mental Health University Institute Research Centre, the Jewish General Hospital’s Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, and the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (The Neuro). Its researchers are taking a big-data approach to understanding, treating and preventing mental illness and neurological disorders.