Conference & Meetings World Supplements Canada Supplement | Page 12

Montréal
Montréal: city of neuroscience
M
ontréal is famous
for its Old World
architecture,
beautiful parks and,
more recently, hipster cafés and
shops, but it has also good claims
to be the education and research
capital of Canada and ranks first in
Canada for financial investment in
university research.
Montréal is home to the largest
number of research centres in the
country, with neuroscience being
an area of local expertise. It has
been said that Montréal is one
of the world’s most active nerve
centres in the scientific study of the
human nervous system.
The city’s universities offer top
programmes in neuroscience and
behaviour studies, with degrees
available at McGill University,
Université de Montréal, Concordia,
and NeuroQAM at the Université du
Québec à Montréal.
At McGill University international
students account for a third of
enrolments and the university is
home to the McGill Research
Centre for Studies in Aging, The
Alan Edwards Centre for Research
on Pain, and CRBLM: The Centre for
Research on Brain, Language and
Music.
The Montreal Neurological
Institute and Hospital at McGill
– known across the globe as
the Neuro – is a world leader in
advanced patient care and brain
research. The Neuro’s impact on
neuroscience has included: Dr.
Penfield’s revolutionary Montreal
Procedure in the treatment of
epilepsy, and being the first to
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CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD
map primary somatosensory cotex (the Penfield
Homonculus).
The Neuro has seen pioneering development of
the field of neuropsychology and development of
neuroimaging technologies including CAT and MRI.
It is also a repository of brain imaging, samples of
neurological disorders from centre patients, and other
genetic and clinical data.
The Douglas Mental Health University Institute hosts
over 300 international researchers and postdoctoral
students, while The Brain@McGill is one of the world’s
largest organisations focused on structural and
functional brain imaging.
The Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and
Mental Health enables the application of a big-data,
transdisciplinary approach to brain research.
There are 240 neuroscience professionals active
in Montréal and the wider province is home to 39
companies related to neurosciences involved in
research, medical, and pharmaceutical industries.
Breakthroughs in recent years have included
measuring the brain to diagnose psychiatric or
neurological diseases at Université Laval and the
Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire en
santé mentale de Québec, while a study of Big
Data helped discover the earliest sign of Alzheimer’s
development. Ludmer researchers Dr Alan Evans and
and post-doctoral fellow Yasser Iturria Medina found
that, contrary to previous understanding, the first
physiological sign of Alzheimer’s
disease is a decrease in blood flow
in the brain.
Montréal-based researchers
also developed a hand-held
probe to aid cancer surgery.
The intraoperative probe reliably
detects multiple types of tumour
cells.
And, earlier this year, the Neuro
received Canada’s first 7T MRI
Scanner: Capable of full-body
scans, the 7-Tesla will allow McGill
students to see the human nervous
system in close-up detail down to
minute scales of mere tenths of a
millimetre.
Montréal researchers have also
opened a new path of discovery
in Parkinson’s disease. Scientists
led by Dr Michel Desjardins from
the University of Montreal and Dr
Heidi McBride from the Montreal
Neurological Institute and Hospital
(MNI) at McGill University discovered
that two genes associated with
Parkinson’s disease (PD) are key
regulators of the immune system,
providing direct evidence linking
Parkinson’s to autoimmune disease.
When it comes to education,
Montréal is also a leader with 36
neuroscience-related University
research chairs in Québec.
While pharmaceutical
companies working in the
field include: BELLUS Health,
Osta Biotechnologies, New
World Laboratories and Nymox
Pharmaceutical.
Key Montréal ‘Neuro’
moments:
• The Neuro is the first research