“The overall morbidity from brain diseases globally is greater than that of heart disease and cancer combined.”
- Guy Rouleau, Director of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill
A history of neuroscience excellence
Since Wilder Penfield established the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill has been a neurosciences powerhouse. Here are just some of our recent discoveries:
Aging and memory
“As it stands now, we have to wait until people are showing symptoms like memory loss and clinical dementia. This means we are diagnosing Alzheimer’s when it’s been present in the brain for as long as 20 years.”
- Prof. Howard Chertkow
Read:
Mental illness and addiction
“What we have in psychiatry is an unacceptable approach to diagnosis and to understanding how to direct patients to particular treatments … it’s nothing more than a symptom list.”
- Prof. Michael Meaney
Read:
- Depression and diabetes
- Analyzing the psyche of risky drivers
- Brain cells altered in depressed patients
- Cocaine withdrawal changes gene behaviour
- Smoking thins outer layer of brain
- A tiny molecule may help battle depression
Watch:
Pain
“Pain research is still in its infancy, because of its complexity…I envisage that in five to ten years, basic discoveries and clinical trials will really start to benefit ordinary people.”
- Prof. Luda Diatchenko
Read:
- Using light to reduce chronic pain
- Men and women wired differently for pain
- The individuality of pain
- New drug target for chronic nerve pain
- 15 minutes of Rock Band ups empathy
Watch:
Behaviour and movement
Read:
- Don’t scan so close to me
- Artificial neurons
- Sleep and Alzheimer’s
- Controlling appetite
- EEG and the placebo effect
- How baby talk in birds helps them learn
- Scientists Are Building VR Worlds for Mice and Monkeys
- Brain cells that aid appetite control identified
- Resetting your body clock
- How your brain tells you to vote
- The psychology of magic
- Parkinson’s patients try the tango
- Can video games hurt your brain?
- McGill alum wins Nobel Prize in Medicine
Mapping the brain
- Prof. Alan Evans
Read:
- McGill wins $84 million grant for neuroscience
- Creation of neuroscience research hub
- Decoding connectivity
- Battling brain cancer
- Data sharing: Access all areas
- Brain tumor growth
- Revolutionary high-res brain atlas
Watch:
McGill neuroscience facts
- #1 among Canadian universities in neurosciences for publication impact and for citation index (size-adjusted) -- key measures of quality
- 270 neuroscientists work at McGill
- 768 graduate students and 255 postdoctoral fellows study at McGill
- 1527 peer-reviewed articles published by McGill’s 20 top neuroscientists in just 5 years
- 38,000 citations of these articles
- 20% of McGill’s Canada Research Chairs are in neurosciences
- Nearly 1/3 of Vanier Graduate Scholarship holders at McGill have studied in neurosciences
- 20,000+ downloads of Big Brain, a breakthrough 3D digital brain atlas
Neuroscience links
- The Brain@McGill – news & resources
- Neuroscience Undergrad Program
- Graduate Student Program (Integrated Program in Neuroscience)
- Neuroscience news from affiliated hospitals:
Videos
Data sharing: Access all areas
World leading expert on pain genetics
Mapping the brain with supercomputers
Mapping the brain on music
