[BIC-announce] Killam Lecture - December 17, 2019

[Alexey Kostikov, Dr]

For distribution please:


Neuroimaging of Human Epigenetic Regulation



Jacob Hooker, PhD

Harvard Medical School

Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging





4 PM TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019

de Grandpré Communications Centre

Abstract. There are an estimated 5.4 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease. Over 4% of all adults have suffered from a serious mental illness in the past year.  Advances in the treatment of brain diseases are needed dramatically. The challenge is daunting given our incredibly limited understanding of the dynamic relationship between neurochemicals in the living human brain at rest, during stimulation, or through drug manipulation.  New hybrid, non-invasive imaging cameras can now provide the first glimpse of both chemical changes in the brain and the functional changes that result.  What’s more is that these new systems have the potential to allow us to explore the interplay between two (or more!) neurotransmitter systems and the functional consequence they facilitate in the brain.  These changes can be resolved into temporal components and taken together can provide the basis for the first whole-brain neurochemical models.  My presentation will review human imaging technologies that can be used to understand neurochemistry and accelerate drug discovery.  Using examples from my research group, I will explore the signatures of neuroinflammation that exist in neurodegeneration, consider emerging opportunities for neuroepigenetic imaging, and highlight new technologies that we are developing that are poised to fundamentally change what we can measure in the living human brain.

Alexey P. Kostikov, Dr.
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology & Neurosurgery
McGill University
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/pipermail/bic-announce/attachments/20191216/2bddc838/attachment.html>