Scientists have gained new insights into the part of the brain that gives us asense of direction,by tracking neural activity with the latest advances in brain imaging techniques.The findings shed light on how the brain orients itself in changing environments–and even the processes that can go wrong with degenerative diseases like dementia,that leave people feeling lost and confused.“Neuroscience research has witnessed atechnology revolution in the last decade allowing us to ask and answer questions that could only be dreamed of just years ago,”says Mark Brandon,an Associate Professor of psychiatry at McGill University and researcher at the Douglas Research Centre,who co-led the research with Zaki Ajabi,a former student at McGill University and now apostdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University.Reading the brain‘s internal compass To understand how visual information impacts the brain’s internal compass,the researchers exposed mice to adisorienting virtual world while recording the brain‘s neural activity.The team recorded the brain’s internal compass with unprecedented precision using the latest advances in neuronal recording technology.This ability to accurately decode the animal‘s internal head direction allowed the researchers to explore how the Head-Direction cells,which make up the brain’s internal compass,support the brain’s ability to re-orient itself in changing surroundings.Specifically,the research team identified aphenomenon they term‘network gain’that allowed the brain’s internal compass to reorient after the mice were disoriented.“It’s as if the brain has amechanism to implement a‘reset button’allowing for rapid reorientation of its internal compass in confusing situations,”says Ajabi.Although the animals in this study were exposed to unnatural visual experiences,the authors argue that such scenarios are already relevant to the modern human experience,especially with the rapid spread of virtual reality technology.These findings“may eventually explain how virtual reality systems can easily take control over our sense of orientation,”adds Ajabi.The results inspired the research team to develop new models to better understand the underlying mechanisms.“This work is abeautiful example of how experimental and computational approaches together can advance our understanding of brain activity that drives behaviour,”says co-author Xue-Xin Wei,a computational neuroscientist and an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin.Degenerative diseases The findings also have significant implications for Alzheimer‘s disease.“One of the first self-reported cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s is that people become disoriented and lost,even in familiar settings,”says Brandon.The researchers expect that abetter understanding of how the brain‘s internal compass and navigation system works will lead to earlier detection and better assessment of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. 查看详细>>

Indigenous communities across the globe are fighting to retain their languages,which serve as means through which cultures,knowledge and traditions are preserved and transmitted between generations.Artificial intelligence(AI)may be able to help.Whether it be through avoice service like Amazon’s Alexa that teaches Indigenous knowledge and languages to children,or speech-to-text technology that can facilitate language preservation,Professor Noelani Arista is exploring how the sovereignty of Indigenous knowledge can be maintained through ever-transforming technology.Arista,who is the Director of the Indigenous Studies Minor Program and Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies,collaborates with other Indigenous scholars,computer scientists and community members to craft solutions to challenges faced by Indigenous communities and create interdisciplinary approaches to indigenizing AI. 查看详细>>

What drives crocodile evolution?Is climate amajor factor or changes in sea levels?Determined to find answers to these questions,researchers from McGill University discovered that while changing temperatures and rainfall had little impact on the crocodiles’gene flow over the past three million years,changes to sea levels during the Ice Age had adifferent effect.“The American crocodile tolerates huge variations in temperature and rainfall.But about 20,000 years ago–when much of the world‘s water was frozen,forming the vast ice sheets of the last glacial maximum–sea levels dropped by more than 100 metres.This created ageographical barrier that separated the gene flow of crocodiles in Panama,”says postdoctoral fellow JoséAvila-Cervantes,working under the supervision of McGill professor Hans Larsson.The researchers point out that the crocodiles are good swimmers,but they can’t travel long distances on land.As aresult,the Caribbean and Pacific crocodile populations were isolated from each other,and consequently have undergone different genetic mutations.The team compared the climate tolerance of living populations of American crocodiles(Crocodylus acutus)to the paleoclimate estimates for the region over the past 3million years–the time span of extreme climate variation during the Ice Age.“This is one of the first times Ice Age effects have been found in atropical species.It’s exciting to discover effects of the last Ice Age glaciation still resonate in the genomes of Pacific and Caribbean American crocodiles today,”says Larsson,Professor of Biology at the Redpath Museum of McGill University.“Discovering that these animals would have easily tolerated the climate swings of the Ice Age speaks to their resilience over geological time.Only humans in recent decades of hunting and land development seem to really affect crocodiles,”he says.The findings offer new insight into how environmental drivers affect genetic evolution and where conservation efforts of particular crocodile populations in Panama should be focused. 查看详细>>

Adult male zebra finches(left)learn their songs and use them during courtship interactions with females(right).Photo credit:Raina Fan.If you listen to songbirds,you will recognize repeated melodies or phrases.Each phrase is made up of distinct sounds,strung together.A study from researchers at McGill University has found that the song phrases of many songbird species follow patterns that are similar to those used in human speech.At least in some respects.Adult male zebra finches(left)learn their songs and use them during courtship interactions with females(right).Photo credit:Raina Fan.If you listen to songbirds,you will recognize repeated melodies or phrases.Each phrase is made up of distinct sounds,strung together.A study from researchers at McGill University has found that the song phrases of many songbird species follow patterns that are similar to those used in human speech.At least in some respects.Do physical elements play arole in songbird(and human)vocal patterns?“Although we see Menzerath’s Law in all the songbird species we looked at,and others have seen it among primates and penguins,we aren’t sure this necessarily reflects enhanced communication efficiency in non-human animals,”said Jon Sakata,a professor in McGill’s Biology Department and the senior author on the paper that was recently published in Current Biology.“It is possible that these patterns of communication that we saw in songbirds are caused by physical predispositions and constraints.”Interestingly,Sakata also notes that the brain mechanisms regulating breathing and vocal muscles seem to be organized in similar ways in birds and humans. 查看详细>>

Closer to home,and case in point,the Québec government announced its 2030 Plan for aGreen Economy which calls for reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.Getting there will require significant improvements to electrical energy storage(i.e.advanced batteries)as well as conversion to hydrogen and other carbon-free energy carriers.Similarly,the Canadian federal government announced plans to greatly expand the role of hydrogen as an energy carrier,as much as 30%of end-use energy consumption by 2050.Against this background,McGill University announced the launch of the McGill Centre for Innovation in Storage and Conversion of Energy(McISCE).The new centre will unite McGill’s world-leading expertise in energy storage and conversion technologies,and specifically targets these areas as the missing enablers in the emerging movement toward aGreen Economy.Hosted by the Faculty of Engineering and building on the McGill Sustainability Systems Initiative(MSSI),the McISCE will draw its expertise from multiple departments in the Faculty of Engineering,as well as diverse researchers in the Faculty of Science,Desautels Faculty of Management,and other departments such as Natural Resource Sciences and Economics.Relying on the interdisciplinary nature of its research core,the McISCE will explore design,prototyping,validation,closed-loop utilization of critical elements,commercialization of sustainable technologies and enviro-socioeconomic impacts,with aparticular focus on the full lifecycle of proposed solutions as per the circular economy paradigm. 查看详细>>

What maintains stability within an ecosystem and prevents asingle best competitor from displacing other species from acommunity?Does ecosystem stability depend upon the presence of awide variety of species,as early ecologists believed,or does diversity do the exact opposite,and lead to instability,as modern theory predicts?Resolving along-standing debate among ecologists Anew study from McGill University and the Max Planck Institute and published recently in Science suggests an answer to this question that has stood unanswered for half acentury among ecologists.The researchers approached the question of population growth using amodel that,so far,had not been used in this context–though it aligns with conventional wisdom and the way that people have traditionally modelled individual growth(from birth to maturity).The researchers used data about population abundance,growth and biomass from avariety of species–including insects,fish and mammals–from across the globe,collected over the past 60 years.Their results,based on extensive analysis,suggests that,contrary to contemporary ecological theory,species diversity leads to ecosystem stability,as early ecologists had believed.Growth in populations slows with density“While nearly all prior theory assumes that populations grow exponentially,there is growing evidence that species actually follow aslightly different course,one in which exponential growth continuously slows down.It’s abit like the law of diminishing returns in economics.”says Ian Hatton,a research associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences,at McGill University and the corresponding author on the paper.“What’s amazing is that such asmall difference in population growth can have such alarge effect on community interactions,completely reversing the predictions from decades of theory.” 查看详细>>

Cyril Mani and Marin Schultz have been named McGill University’s recipients of the prestigious Schulich Leader Scholarship.Out of apool of more than 300,000 potential candidates across Canada,1,400 students were nominated,of whom 50 received this celebrated award.Cyril Mani,19,received the$100,000 Schulich Leader Scholarship.A graduate of Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal,Mani will be entering the department of Mechanical Engineering in McGill’s Faculty of Engineering this fall.Mani was selected for his outstanding academic record highlighted by honours including the Bourse de l‘Avenir from the Fondation de l‘Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec and aCanadian Association of Physicists award.Mani is also one of the founders of Micreau,an organization of student ambassadors leading interactive workshops at elementary and high schools,aimed at educating students about global issues and practical skills such as autonomy,self-management and critical thinking.“Attending McGill for me is all about the people that make it unique,”says Mani.“Being in auniversity that encourages its faculties to interact as McGill does is very important since Iwant to experience different ways of thinking and diverse points of view.” 查看详细>>

Major federal and provincial investments in genomics research were announced this week following three recent Genome Canada competitions.The announcement,made at University of Guelph,includes over$10 million in funding to seven projects led by McGill researchers.Here‘s aquick look at one of those projects.(A complete list follows.)Since the sequencing of the human genome at the beginning of the millennium,scientists have made great strides in understanding the role genes play in our identity,differences among individuals and our susceptibility to diseases such as cancer.Bioinformatics and computational tools are critical in visualizing and analyzing genetic data,but they fall short when it comes to three-dimensional analysis of how DNA is folded onto itself to fit into the nucleus,known as its chromatin architecture.This 3D structure defines the genome’s normal function during early cell differentiation and development and is known to drive many developmental disabilities as well as cancer.There is apressing need for anew generation of computational tools that integrates our knowledge of these 3D states,to help researchers make optimal use of the rapidly increasing amounts of data produced by modern DNA sequencing.A team led by McGill professors Mathieu Blanchette,Jacek Majewski and,Jérome Waldispühl will create and release improved computational and statistical tools for analyzing 3D data in their native 3D context.Their new tools will be integrated with the team’s 3D visualization platform that will help scientists explore the data,build new hypotheses and test them in rigorous statistical frameworks.The results of this project will be made widely available through open-source software that will enable statistically robust analysis of individual and groups of 3D genomic data;provide avirtual reality-based 3D genome browser supporting integrated visualization of genomic data;and include atoolset for integrative mining of genomic and epigenomic data in their 3D genome context.A lay version of the visualization platform will also be used for community outreach through exhibits in schools and museums. 查看详细>>

A patient develops arare condition and needs answers,so their clinician searches frantically to find patients with similar,rare,symptoms and similar possible causes.To understand the mechanisms of one debilitating disease,a medical researcher tries to separate the“signal”of causes of that disease,in particular,from the“noise”of natural biological variation of human lives and conditions.Getting the answers those patients and researchers need requires the ability to analyze or query health and genomic data from an enormous number of patients-patients who have their own needs,and deserve to have their data kept at the highest levels of security and privacy.Today acollaboration of African,Canadian,and EU researchers came together to announce the CINECA(Common Infrastructure for National Cohorts in Europe,Canada,and Africa)project,establishing an unprecedented multi-continental project to build the infrastructure--data standards,technical protocols,and software--to allow queries and analyses over the distributed data sets made available by each partner,while allowing those partners complete control over the patient data that they have been entrusted with.Canada’s health data system has always necessarily been federated,and the experience of the Canadian Distributed Infrastructure for Genomics(CanDIG)with building federated queries and analyses over locally controlled private health data is essential to the project.CanDIG member institutions SickKids and McGill University are directly involved with CINECA,and CanDIG as awhole will bring its experience to bear by leading the work of building standard methods for federating queries,and actively participating in building compatible and interoperable systems for login,access control,and running complex distributed analyses.“CanDIG is already connecting several important Canadian health data sets in cancer research”,said Guillaume Bourque,Director of the Centre for Computational Genomics at McGill and Co-PI of CanDIG.“As part of this project,we are proposing to connect additional Canadian data sets,and then connect those to an even larger number of data sets internationally.Those new connections between data sets are going to allow Canadian researchers much deeper insight into even that data that they already had access to.”“The technical goals we have set for ourselves are ambitious”,said Mike Brudno,PI of the CanDIG project and Senior Scientist at SickKids Hospital in Toronto.“But CanDIG has extensive experience working with CINECA partner projects EGA(European Genome/Phenome Archive)and ELIXIR(A European network of life sciences and bioinformatics resources)through their participation as peer Driver Projects for the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health(GA4GH).Building on what our projects have already done alone and together,we’re confident that we can not only meet those goals,but build open-source standards-based solutions for the entire community.”“Key to this project’s success is trusted,reliable,federated data querying and analysis”,said Steve Jones,Head of Bioinformatics and Co-Director,Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre,and Co-PI of CanDIG.“We’ve shown how this can be done in support of real science and insight,while retaining control over the data we have been entrusted with;and we’re excited to bring our expertise in data federation to the international community.”The CINECA project is funded by both the EU through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the Canadian Government through the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.CanDIG is aCanadian national health and genomics platform for allowing authorized queries and analysis of data over locally-controlled private data sets.For more information,see https://www.distributedgenomics.ca/The Canadian Center for Computational Genomics provides bioinformatics analysis and HPC services for the life science research community.For more information,see http://www.computationalgenomics.ca/ 查看详细>>

Following the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine,global attention is now more than ever turned toward the promise of immunotherapy in oncology.An international team’s work has shed new light on amolecule called TIM-3 that might play akey role in the regulation of the immune response.Scientists and physicians from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre(RI-MUHC),the Montreal Children‘s Hospital of the MUHC(MCH-MUHC)and McGill University,in collaboration with French teams from AP-HP,Inserm,UniversitéParis-Descartes,UniversitéParis-Diderot,and the Imagine Institute at the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital,have singled out this protein as the next potential target for immunotherapy treatments in patients with cancer and other diseases."This study places the TIM-3 protein at the heart of immune system regulation.We could use it as atarget in immunotherapies to trigger enhanced immune responses in patients with cancer and better treat them,"says co-lead author of this study,Dr.Nada Jabado,who is aresearcher from the Child Health and Human Development Program at the RI-MUHC and an hemato-oncologist at MCH-MUHC.Researchers found that when the TIM-3 protein is suppressed or inactive,the immune system becomes completely“unleashed”and Tcells are uncontrollably over-activated,resulting in arare form of lymphoma(a form of cancer that starts in the lymphocytes)called subcutaneous panniculitis Tlymphoma(LTSCP).The team of researchers has identified two founder mutations at the origin of this syndrome,which act directly on the TIM-3 protein,preventing it from expressing itself on the surface of the lymphocytes and attacking the cancer cells.They also found that this form of lymphoma associated with over-activation of the immune response was more widespread than they first thought.These results,which led researchers to consider this form of lymphoma as anew genetic disease,are being published in the journal Nature Genetics on Monday,October 29. 查看详细>>