BrainWaves: The Neuroscience Graduate Program Newsletter

May There Be Conferences

AUTHOR: Vanessa Morris

May has been the month for conferences! In case you missed any of them, here’s a rundown of the conference events, oral presentations, and all of our MiNDS student achievements.

McMaster Psychiatry Research Day

The theme for this year was “Risk and Resilience in Child Youth and Mental Health”. The day began with keynote speaker Dr. William Gardner and his talk on Risk, Resilience, and Child Population Health which focused on some of the big picture, statistical, aspects of child and adolescent mental health care. Following Dr. Gardner, we had two department talks from members of the MiNDS family: Dr. Zena Samaan and Dr. Michael Amlung. Dr. Samann’s talk focused on opioid use management and how experimental drug use in youth can be better targeted and treated, while Dr. Amlung shared some perspectives on decision-making in addiction and how drug use can affect the developing brain. Lastly, we wrapped up the day with our second keynote speaker, Dr. Jennifer Jenkins who discussed Emotion Regulation, Family Interaction and the Prevention of Child Psychopathology


MiNDS student poster presentations:

Bahar Amani

Krysta Andrews

Brendan R. Fera

Kristie L. Poole

Arman Shekari

Judith Tran

Gésine Alders

Patricia Al-Salom

Fiza Arshad

Bryce Bogie

Duncan Cameron

Melissa Elgie

Melissa Furtado

Gillian England-Mason

Gabriella Mattina

Vanessa Morris

Herry Patel

Amber Rieder

Anastasia Slyepchenko


Congratulations to two of our students, Bahar Amani and Kristie Poole, who were finalists in the Top 3 Graduate Non-Clinical Poster category!

Southern Ontario Neuroscience Association (SONA)

This year SONA kicked off its 38th annual meeting with a talk by one of our very own MiNDS faculty members; Dr. Iris Balodis shared her insight and presented some of her research on the topic of reward and stress processing in gambling disorderFollowing Dr. Balodis, we heard from Dr. Katherine Duncan about how novelty shapes fundamental memory processes, Dr. Jibran Khokhar on the topic of the ways in which substance use and schizophrenia interactand Dr. Anne Wheeler who discussed MRI and mild traumatic brain injury. During the afternoon session, four students in each academic stage of their career were invited to present their research. We had the pleasure of hearing from Minesh Kapadia, a post-doc from Dr. Fahnestock’s lab. Minesh wrapped up the afternoon Trainee Talks by presenting his work on how immunosuppression modulates central pathology in the 3xTG-AD mouse model.

 

MiNDS Student Poster Presentations

Shawna L. Thompson

Ashley Bernardo

Arman Shekari

Kevin Champagne-Jorgensen
Sawayra Owais
Brendan R. Fera
Judith Tran
Kathryn E. Reynolds

Faculty of Health Science (FHS) Research Plenary

The FHS Plenary was held over the course of three days on the McMaster campus. Poster session were held in the beautiful Heersink Reading Pavilion on May 15th, 16th, and 17th, and oral presentations took place in a variety of MDCL rooms on May 15th and 17th. As always, FHS did an excellent job of showcasing student research by ensuring that all posters and talks were presented by graduate students and post-docs, and by allowing fellow students and peers to judge the presentations. The awards reception will take place (with wine and cheese!) on May 30th at 4pm - fingers crossed for all of our MiNDS students.

 

MiNDS Student Oral Presentations

Christopher Rowley - Changes in Intracortical MRI signal in Huntington’s Disease

John Krzeczkowski - Maternal gestational diet quality and infant heart rate variability at 6 months of age

Kathryn Reynolds - Astrocyte thrombospondin-1 expression is altered in Fragile X syndrome following treatment with exogenous UTP


MiNDS Student Poster Presentations

Bahar Amani

Brendan R. Fera

Steven Mancini

Gabriella Mattina

Sawayra Owais

Patricia Al-Salom

Bryce Bogie

Anastasiya Slyepchenko

Gésine Alders

Vanessa Morris

Arman Shekari

Gillian England-Mason

Crystal Mahadeo