Loneliness is becoming increasingly recognized as a serious threat to mental health. Social isolation is detrimental to adult brain function and behavior across mammalian species. Chronic social isolation in rodents has been found to lead to depression-, anxiety-, and psychosis-like behaviors as well as signs of abnormal locomotor habituation, fear responses and aggression. However, our understanding of how and why social isolation is risky for health — or conversely — how and why social ties and relationships are protective of health, remains quite limited. Our lab makes use of advanced brain imaging and recording techniques to map connections between brain areas. We plan to use these techniques to help us to first understand the neuropsychiatric basis of chronic social isolation in animal models. A machine learning algorithm will be used to classify large behavior datasets automatically and objectively, and potentially uncover new pathological behavioral patterns that have been overlooked by human observers. Mapping large-scale brain functional connectivity associated with social isolation–induced behavioral deficits may shed light on the etiopathogenesis of mental disorders and lead to the identification of therapeutic targets.
Research Location: University of British Columbia - Vancouver Campus
Movement and young minds: Co-designing and integrating physical activity programming into health services for young people experiencing mental health and substance use challenges
In Canada, mental health and substance use (MHSU) disorders affect 25 percent of young people aged 12 to 24 years. Foundry is an organization in British Columbia (BC) made up of a number of centres across the province that offer a variety of services to young people with MHSU disorders. A service not yet offered is physical activity, which can be used to manage mental and physical health. An ideal time to help people develop healthy habits, including being physically active, is while they are still teenagers or young adults.
This study will explore how physical activity programming can be included as a service offered through Foundry centres. This will be done by using photographs to understand youth needs; development of a working group to consider how to add a service; and, co-creation of a physical activity program. This work will be done collaboratively with diverse youth, service providers, and researchers. The long-term goal is to improve the quality of care, and the health of young people with MHSU disorders living in BC, Canada and across the world.
Couples’ perinatal sexual health and well-being
Over 380,000 Canadian couples become pregnant each year. Of these, 20-68 percent of mothers and 22-45 percent of partners will experience distressing sexual health problems (e.g. low sexual desire, pain) that begin in pregnancy and that may continue up to 12-months postpartum. In turn, poor sexual health has many known consequences for overall health and well-being and is linked with increased use of health services. Yet, most new parents receive no information about sexual health during this period, in part, due to limited knowledge about who is most at risk and a lack of evidence-based interventions to address perinatal sexual health problems. Using a variety of research methods we will:
- Identify factors associated with who is most likely to experience perinatal sexual health problems.
- Use these factors to pilot a novel couples-based psychological intervention to improve sexual health.
In addition to benefits for couples’ sexual health, this research will also enhance couples’ general well-being, by reducing the psychological and relational burdens during an already vulnerable period. This knowledge will be shared with perinatal healthcare providers in order to improve perinatal healthcare practices.
SCI pharmacovigilance: A drug safety platform to improve neurologic outcomes in spinal cord injury
Individuals with spinal cord injury experience various secondary complications including pain and muscle spasms. These complications are treated simultaneously with various medications resulting in “polypharmacy.”
The goal of my MSFHR work is to apply advanced analytical techniques to understand the neurologic effects of commonly used medications. This work challenges longstanding assumptions regarding the acute pharmacological management of spinal cord injury. Ultimately, this will yield new insights into neurologic drug safety, which in turn will optimize recovery from spinal cord injury. This will also lay the foundation for a pharmacovigilance (drug safety) platform in spinal cord injury — the first of its kind in the field.
Defining and detecting traumatic events and symptoms in autism
One in every 58 children in British Columbia meet criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) — an increasingly common developmental disorder characterized by notable social and communication difficulties. Co-occurring mental and physical health conditions are the rule, rather than the exception for those on the spectrum and associated with poorer outcomes as well as more complex and costly healthcare needs for affected families. Childhood trauma is a major risk factor for physical and mental illness that has been understudied in ASD and for which there are few evidence-based guidelines. Clinical research and practice have been limited by a lack of assessment tools designed to account for the different ways in which youth with ASD may experience and express psychological trauma.
The goal of this proposal is to address this measurement gap and therein enable the applicant to develop a unique research program focused on improving the recognition, characterization, prevention and treatment of traumatic events and symptoms in autistic youth and young adults. Stakeholder engagement and knowledge translation activities will be used throughout to guide the development of measures and to inform future research, practice, and policy.
Unlocking the competitive potential of pluripotent stem cells: Towards novel stem cell therapeutics
Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) have the ability to expand endlessly, making copies of themselves, as well as to differentiate into all specialized cell types of the body. As a result, PSCs have opened the door to deriving cellular therapies that have unprecedented promise for treating degenerative diseases. Despite this promise, we lack an understanding of how to control their behaviour — whether they divide, die, or differentiate.
My laboratory will use a combination of cutting-edge experimental and computational technologies to study PSC fitness — the ability of these cells to eliminate each other via cell-cell killing. Our research will uncover the genetic basis of their fitness to predict the emergence of abnormally competitive PSCs, those with aberrant genetic mutations, and to use synthetic biology tools to remove these from cell manufacturing batches. We will also engineer PSCs to enhance their fitness, allowing us to grow these cells in the lab with better efficiency and safety. This research will lead to health and economic benefits for Canadians, improving the efficacy of cell therapies and building on our legacy of stem cell research that began with the initial discovery of stem cells in 1961 by Drs. Till and McCulloch.
Determining the molecular basis of fragile X disorders
Neurodevelopmental and fertility disorders represent significant health burdens in Canada, as approximately 1 in 66 Canadian youth are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, and 1 in 6 Canadian couples experience infertility. Neurons and reproductive cells (oocytes and sperm) rely extensively on a form of control of gene expression called translational control. Mutations in the translational regulatory gene Fmr1 underlie the fragile X disorders known as fragile X syndrome (FXS) and fragile X primary ovarian insufficiency (FXPOI), which are leading causes of autism and premature ovarian failure respectively.
The proposed research will build upon my recent discoveries of Fmr1’s role in promoting the translation of genes encoding large proteins — many of which are associated with autism — in order to understand the mechanism by which Fmr1 activates translation. Knowledge of this mechanism will be of immense clinical value, enabling the development of novel therapies for citizens of British Columbia experiencing a fragile X disorder or related autism spectrum or infertility disorder.
Promoting workplace psychological health and safety of the nursing workforce in the long-term care sector
Every week, at least 500,000 Canadian employees are unable to work due to poor mental health, costing employers upwards of $6 billion in lost productivity. In healthcare, poor employee mental health leads to patient suffering and death and severe rates of staff absenteeism and turnover. Nurses, who constitute the largest human resource in healthcare, experience a disproportionately high rate of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, and these conditions severely impact patient outcomes. COVID-19 has exacerbated the already numerous workplace risk factors that nurses face, with especially damaging impacts in the long-term care sector (LTC).
COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on workplace psychological health and safety for nurses across healthcare contexts, and especially in LTC. My research responds to this urgent need to improve the quality and safety of resident care provision by improving the workplace conditions for nurses in LTC, driving better systems and patient outcomes. I will work with new and existing partners to identify, implement, and evaluate best practices and policies in this sector. This research will have vast implications for scholarship, policy, and the success of healthcare ecosystems in Canada.
The role of microglia in neurodevelopmental disorders
Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) impact 7 to 14 percent of all children in developed countries. NDDs are incredibility heterogeneous and are caused by a complex interaction of genetic and environmental risk factors. One of the most consistent findings across NDDs is altered immune function, but it is unclear if neuroinflammation is a cause or consequence of brain pathology. My laboratory will directly test for causality and identify the optimal mechanisms and timepoints for immune based interventions in NDDs. Targets and compounds that impact microglia, the main immune cell in the brain, have immense potential for treating a broad range of NDDs.
The neuroscience and molecular genetics of mosquito chemosensation
Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on the planet. Many species use sophisticated sensory systems, including smell and taste, to locate human beings and other animal hosts in their environment as a source of blood. When they blood-feed, they can transmit microorganisms that cause human diseases including malaria and dengue fever. After converting a blood-meal into eggs, a female mosquito must find an appropriate body of water to lay eggs where her offspring will thrive. Selecting an egg-laying site is an important part of the mosquito lifecycle, since the juvenile larval and pupal stages are aquatic and cannot move from where they hatch. Mosquitoes do not fly far, and so their choice of breeding site strongly influences where they can be found as adults and thus, where they can transmit disease.
The goal of my research is to understand how mosquitoes use their sense of smell and taste to make decisions about who to bite and where to lay eggs. I use techniques to modify their DNA and to look at the activity in their brains under a microscope. Ultimately, this research will help us understand why some mosquitoes are more deadly than others and provide the basis for mosquito control strategies such as traps and repellents.