Neurosciences & Mental Health

We explore learning and memory, language acquisition, knowledge processes, and the way our brains normally digest and process information (in the context of specific cognitive disorders).

We utilize traditional psychophysical methods, behavioural and cognitive testing, advanced cellular and molecular biology techniques, and modern brain-scan technology in our mental health and neuroscience research. 

By examining how the developing brain is influenced by early sensory experience, sensory system studies aim to promote sensory adaptation – ultimately allowing children to better perceive, comprehend, communicate, interact, and experience the world around them.

Brain injury and repair scientists’ goal is to develop better methods of predicting neurocognitive outcomes in children with acquired brain injury. Neuroimaging, neuroelectrophysiological, physiological measures and experimental techniques, including iPS cells and brain organoids, and other multimodal approaches drive studies in this area. 

Neurodevelopment refers to how the nervous system and the pathways responsible for normal brain function are built during embryonic and postnatal life. We examine how stem cells build and sculpt the brain, the processes by which neurons and glia construct and shape the circuits that ensure proper cognitive and motor function, and how disruptions in genes and the environment result in neurodevelopmental disorders and developmental delay.  

Unique to SickKids, the use of multimodal imaging of sensory and cognitive functions in children demands highly skilled, multidisciplinary collaborations among our expert team of physicists, neuroscientists, behavioural neuroscientists, and clinical scientists.

Clinical research is driven by brain imaging using structural and functional MRI, as well as MEG, localizing the nervous system injury sites and types, and defining their relationships to cognitive and behavioural abnormalities. 

The Miller/Kaplan Lab uses single cell and spatial transcriptomics, along with epigenomics and phosphoproteomics, in utero and post-natal electorporation with Crispr and shRNA knockdown vectors. 

These three SickKids labs utilize magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG accruately measures of brain function, with excellent temporal and spatial resolution. However, recordings in infants and toddlers, and young children with developmental disability, are difficult in conventional MEG systems, as those scanners are designed for adult-sized heads, and recordings are inaccurate with movement. 

These labs have begun working with a new type of MEG brain imaging sensor – optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs). These sensors can be mounted in a flexible cap or customized helmet, specifically for a child’s head size, allowing for more organic experiments as participants can move and speak during their studies. OPM-MEG provides improved sensitivity over conventional neuroimaging systems, as the sensors are closer to the brain.   

With continued development, OPM-MEG will allow brain imaging studies in children across the full spectrum of development and a wide range of disorders, from the beginning of symptom onset, and help monitor the effects of the earliest interventions.

The Mary Lou Smith Lab recently pinpointed, for the first time ever, the long-term effects of childhood treatments for epilepsy on cognition, behaviour and quality of life. 

Combining patch-clamp electrophysiology and multiphoton real-time imaging in transgenic mouse models, the Wang Lab has done extensive work to conceptualize how sensory synapses remodel their morphology and function during the critical period of brain development to facilitate information transfer and coding. The work also explored how dysregulated excitation and inhibition (E/I) balance in the developing brain contributes to autism spectrum disorder and neonatal neurotoxicity. 

The Josselyn/Frankland Lab uses a variety of methods (including 2-photon microscopy, 1-photon mini-endoscopes, optogenetics, gene transfer techniques and detailed behavioural analysis) to understand how information is acquired, stored, used and sometimes forgotten in the brain of rodents.  

Research is driven by biological questions, and we use the most appropriate tool to try to answer these questions. We often engage with computational, theoretical and cognitive neuroscience to help guide our hypothesis and analysis. 

The Steven Miller lab discovered that babies born early (preterm) or with congenital heart disease (CHD) share similar vulnerability to white matter injury (WMI), abnormal brain maturation, and developmental impairments in early childhood.  

Using multimodal brain imaging, their team found that WMI underlies brain dysmaturation and early neurodevelopmental disability in both populations of neonates. Through these studies, they developed an innovative lesion mapping method that describes the likelihood of vulnerability for WMI in the baby brain, and reveals how WMI volume and spatial pattern are associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes. The Miller Lab also established the “importance of the everyday” for brain maturation in critically ill neonates: pain, nutrition, and common illness such as infection, significantly alter the trajectory of early brain maturation. These findings help us design and implement new strategies towards brain injury repair, and promote optimal brain maturation and neurodevelopmental outcome. 

• Empower Reading and Learning
• Quantifying Brain Injury on Computed Tomography
• Garry Hurvitz Centre for Brain and Mental Health at SickKids

• Dr. Donald Mabbott
• Dr. Cathy Barr
• Dr. Douglas Cheyne
• Dr. Jennifer Crosbie
• Dr. Paul Frankland
• Dr. Louise Gallagher
• Dr. Karen Gordon
• Dr. Anne Marie Guerguerian
• Dr. Zhengping Jia 
• Dr. Sheena Josselyn
• Dr. David Kaplan
• Dr. Julie Lefebvre
• Dr. Steven Prescott
• Dr. Michael Salter
• Dr. Margot Taylor
• Dr. Lu-Yang Wang
• Dr. Anne Wheeler
• Dr. Agnes Wong

• Dr. Benjamin Dunkley
• Dr. George Ibrahim
• Dr. Darren Kadis
• Dr. Farzad Khalvati
• Dr. Julien Muffat
• Dr. Amra Saric
• Dr. Benjamin Steinberg
• Dr. Jiannis Taxidis

• Dr. Nomazulu Dlamini
• Dr. Birgit Ertl-Wagner 
• Dr. Christopher (Risto) Filippi
• Dr. Cecil Hahn 
• Dr. Mary Lou Smith 
• Dr. Emily Tam 
• Dr. Ann Yeh 

• Dr. Andrea Knight
• Dr. Daphne Korczak
• Dr. Tricia Williams

• Dr. Nicole McKinnon
• Dr. Jennifer Quon

• Dr. Robert Harrison
• Dr. Jamie Hutchison
• Dr. Maureen Lovett 
• Dr. Joanne Rovet 
• Dr. Russell Schachar
• Dr. Peter Szatmari
• Dr. Rosemary Tannock
• Dr. Carol Westall

• Dr. James Drake
• Dr. Elizabeth Pang

• Dr. Elia Abi-Jaoude
• Dr. Stephen Brown
• Dr. Raymond Buncic
• Dr. Vann Chau
• Dr. Mehmet Cizmeci
• Dr. Lana Depatie
• Dr. Elizabeth Donner
• Dr. Elizabeth Dettmer
• Dr. Carolina Gorodetsky
• Dr. Joelene Huber
• Dr. Jason Isaacs
• Dr. Laura Janzen
• Dr. Deepa Kattail
• Dr. Chana Korenblum
• Dr. Aneta Krakowski
• Dr. Chaya Kulkarni
• Dr. Elka Miller
• Dr. Hiroshi Otsubo
• Dr. Maria del Carmen Parra-Farinas
• Dr. Andrea Regina
• Dr. Lauren Sham
• Dr. Katia Sinopoli
• Dr. Teesta Soman
• Dr. Shelly Weiss
• Dr. Hilary Whyte

• Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati
• Dr. Brian Kalish
• Dr. Jason Lerch
• Dr. Freda Miller
• Dr. Steven Miller
• Dr. Elysa Widjaja

• Theresa Dudley
• Diana Arthurs
• Samira Fairuz
• Suhkveer Kaur
• Delina Romano

Given to just 55 out of 1,500 co-op supervisors, Dr. Elizabeth Pang received the UBC Science Co-op Supervisor Recognition Award, which recognizes “super” supervisors who provide exceptional mentorship, demonstrate excellent leadership/managerial skills, and go above and beyond to provide a meaningful and quality work experience for their students.

Dr. George Ibrahim was recently named a recipient of  Canada's Top 40 Under 40 award, a celebration of the top up-and-coming leaders in the country. 

Dr. Ibrahim is a paediatric neurosurgeon and Associate Scientist in the Neurosciences & Mental Health program at SickKids Research Institute. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto.

At SickKids, he treats children with medically-intractable epilepsy, spasticity and functional disorders. His lab has yielded insights into personalized treatments for children with epilepsy and functional disorders by targeting specific network impairments and developing novel devices and treatment strategies. He was part of the team that performed the first deep brain stimulation to treat drug-resistant paediatric epilepsy in Canada. 

Dr. Mary Lou Smith is the recipient of the 2020 Fritz Dreifuss Award from the America Epilepsy Society!

She's the Senior Associate Scientist in the Neurosciences & Mental Health Program, and a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. 

For more than 30 years, Dr. Smith has dedicated her career to cognitive and behavioural co-morbidities associated with epilepsy. Her work has addressed these topics from a number of perspectives, including the clinical nature of intractable epilepsy, and theoretical issues for understanding early brain dysfunction. This award recognizes her significant accomplishments and impact in the field of epilepsy research. 

Dr. Freda Miller captured the 2019 Till & McCulloch Award for a new research discovery in tissue repair and regeneration that holds potential for future therapies.  

The Award is presented annually to one researcher in Canada who has made an exceptional contribution to global stem cell research in that year. Dr. Miller presented the Award lecture on November 5 at the Till & McCulloch Meetings (TMM) in Montréal, Québec, based on her Cell Stem Cell paper entitled, “Mesenchymal Precursor Cells in Adult Nerves Contribute to Mammalian Tissue Repair and Regeneration.” 

• Investigators: Dunkley, BT, Zhang, J & Richardson, JD.
• Grant: $977K, Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) Program, Department of National Defence.

• Primary Investigator: Gordon, K.A.
• Co-investigators: Papsin, B.C., Cushing, S.L.
• Collaborators: Scollie, S., Papaioannou, V.
• CIHR Project Grant, Fall 2019 competition.

• Primary Investigator: Freda Miller
• Co-investigators: Gary Bader, David Kaplan, Cindi Morshead, Yun Li, Penny Gilbert, Alison McGuigan, Sid Goyal
• Canada First Research Excellence Fund - Medicine by Design 9/1/2019-8/31/2022

• Primary Investigator: Steven Miller
• CIHR Fall 2019 Competition

• Investigators: Mabbott DJ, Bouffet E , Laughlin S, Willan A, Larouche V, Beattie T, Cheng S, Girgis R, Sinha R, Khan N, Halverson M, Lafay-Cousin L, Hukin J, Erker C, Johnston D, Crooks B, Wilson V, Haas K, Haas T.
• Canadian Cancer Society/CIHR Cancer Survivorship Team Grant. ($2,500,000 2019-2024).

Julie Lefebvre is a co-PI on a Medicine by Design Cycle 2 Team Grant aimed to improve outcomes of cell-based retinal therapy for preserving and restoring sight (lead PI Molly Shoichet).

Giulia Longoni received a Feiga Bresver Catalyst grant for Quantitative Perfusion Imaging for Autoimmune Encephalitis Diagnosis and Monitoring. From the Centre for Brain & Mental Health, $98,694.