Career Summary

Proposed Research Program - Amphibian

Proposed Research Program - Neuronal Networks

Proposed Research Program - Human Imaging

Refocusing a line of research, and developing analysis techniques has allowed me to have two major breakthroughs in my academic career. First and foremost, my intellectual training at Concordia and the Montreal Neurological Institute trained me to look at research questions from several vantage points, then pick the most important, sometimes contrary to the established published record, and develop a clear path that will answer specific questions.

Working in Dr. J.C. Leiter's lab in Dartmouth College, I was presented with the amphibian brainstem that manifests respiratory rhythms even after being excised from the body. To me, the interesting aspect of this animal preparation is that the metamorphic stages do not occur in utero , and certain developmental phenotypic cues (such as tail length, mouth size and finger digits) can be used as indicators of the underlying neuronal network changes occurring in the brainstem. By presenting the tadpole brainstem as a novel preparation for investigating neuronal network development I was awarded a Grass Fellowship to work at the Marine Biological Laboratories (MBL) in Woods Hole Massachusetts for the summer in 2004. While in at the MBL I was able to discuss my ideas for developing the tadpole brainstem with leaders in the field of neuronal networks such as Dr. Eve Maurder and Dr. Rudolpho Llinas.

When I returned from Woods Hole to Dartmouth I immediately applied for a Hitchcock grant offered by the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical School. By broadening the scope the of the utility of the amphibian brainstem, not only as an interesting preparation to elucidate the evolution of air breathing, but rather as a reverse model of neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson's, Dystonia and Alzheimer's, I was awarded a $50K equipment grant. Serendipitously my grant was noticed by a neurosurgeon resident, Dr. Kendall Lee, who was investigating the mechanisms action of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's and Dystonia. Together we developed a short project and published a landmark paper describing that the mechanism of DBS is not similar to lesion, but increased dopamine release.

Concurrently in the Department of Education, the lab where my wife was working towards her Ph.D., acquired a novel non-invasive neuroimaging system that utilizes low power laser to measure blood flow changes in the brain. Although the concept of Near-Infrared spectroscopy has been around since 1977, only in recent years has this technology made its way out of the physics research labs. The fundamental problem that faced Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto's lab was that no systemic way of recording or analyzing cognitive neuroimaging functional NIRS data exists. Working on the project, I developed both data acquisition and analysticam methods, which I delivered to the Petitto lab in the form of specific and user-friendly protocols and computer programs to; (1) place the optode arrays consistently across all subjects, (2) record data, (3) export data, (4) analyze data and (5) present it in a meaningful way. The fruits of this labour were noticed at the Society for Neurosciences meeting in 2006 where our presentation was selected from over 30,000 others, for press release. Consequently I have been invited to talk to numerous press representatives, give lectures and the work has been cited in a number of different languages. Currently we have 6 completed projects in various stages of publication and I continue my collaboration with Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto (who is now at University of Toronto ) as a consultant.

 

Teaching Philosophy