Baycrest Health Sciences & Baycrest Foundation Publications
Issue link: http://baycrest.uberflip.com/i/218229
Dr. Tomáš Paus Dr. Bradley Buchsbaum senior scientist Scientist Anne and Max Tanenbaum Professor and Chair of Population Neuroscience THE WHOLE PICTURE RELIVING THE EXPERIENCE Why do certain families, and even ethnicities, live longer, healthier lives? What factors make some susceptible to disease and what factors protect against it? Dr. Tomáš Paus is looking for these answers by studying the complex interactions between environment and genes. At the Trans-generational Brain and Body Centre, located at Baycrest, Dr. Paus and his team use advanced imaging tools to study brain, behaviour and its relationship to physical health, lifelong experiences and genetic variations. When people have a rich and vivid memory of a past experience, it's often described as being transported back in time, or a feeling that we are reliving the moment. In a recent study, Dr. Bradley Buchsbaum and his colleagues showed that there are similarities between how the brain processes a direct perception of a vivid experience and the memory of that experience. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers were able to map the similarities in brain activity when people were asked to watch a diverse set of video clips, and when asked to remember those clips. The results show that complex, vivid memory involves, to some degree, reinstating the same pattern of brain activity as in the original perception. It could be said that we are, in effect, reliving the experience. Such research is expanding our understanding of how the brain processes information, knowledge that may one day yield new ideas about how to help people sustain memory function or prevent its impairment. In his current research, Dr. Paus is studying family members spanning three generations (grandparents, parents, children) to explore how nature and nurture interact to shape the brain and body across the lifespan. The goal is to determine the factors that influence whether a person will age in a healthy manner or be at risk of developing disorders such as depression, dementia, obesity and diabetes. In turn, these findings may help us to develop personalized preventive strategies to stay healthy as long as possible.