Illustration by Jeremy Leung, Published 14:37, May. 19, 2021
In the ’90s, when he was a doctoral student at the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, neuroscientist Sean Hill spent five years studying how cat brains respond to noise. At the time, researchers knew that two regions the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain, and the thalamus, a nut-like structure near the centre did most of the work. But, when an auditory signal entered the brain through the ear, what happened, specifically? Which parts of the cortex and thalamus did the signal travel to? And in what order? The answers to such questions could help doctors treat hearing loss in humans. So, to learn more, Hill, along with his supervisor and a group of lab techs, anaesthetized cats and inserted electrodes into their brains to monitor what happened when the animals were exposed to sounds, which were piped into their ears via miniature headphones. Hill’s probe then captured the brain signals th
Thank you, nurses!
Dear Editor,
Since the week of May 9 to 15 is National Nursing Week, I’d like to thank all the nurses who have helped me cope with all the health issues I have had to deal with over the years.
I’d especially like to thank all those nurses who treated me as an inpatient and outpatient at the Hospital for Sick Children, Oshawa General Hospital (Now Lakeridge Health), Toronto General Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital, and Health Sciences.
I also appreciate the excellent care the Ajax Pickering Hospital nursing staff gave towards my late father, and mom, and the Oshawa Lakeridge Hospital nurses’ excellent care to my late brother. I don’t know where I would be without all the doctors, nurses, and other health care providers. Yes, we should all celebrate and thank our nursing health heroes, not just during this COVID-19 pandemic, but for every day! Again, Thank You, nurses!
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IMAGE: Senior author and Princess Margaret Scientist Dr. Marianne Koritzinsky s research reveals the potential of targeted therapies to exploit unique metabolic features of pancreatic cancer cells. view more
Credit: Visual Services, UHN
(Toronto, Friday, May 7, 2021) Probing the unique biology of human pancreatic cancer cells in a laboratory has yielded unexpected insights of a weakness that can be used against the cells to kill them.
Led by Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PM) Scientist Dr. Marianne Koritzinsky, researchers showed that about half of patient-derived pancreatic cancer cell lines are highly dependent or addicted to the protein peroxiredoxin 4 (PRDX4), as a result of the altered metabolic state of the cancer cell.
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TORONTO - Scientists at the Krembil Brain Institute, part of University Health Network (UHN), in collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), have used precious and rare access to live human cortical tissue to identify functionally important features that make human neurons unique.
This experimental work is among the first of its kind on live human neurons and one of the largest studies of the diversity of human cortical pyramidal cells to date. The goal of this study was to understand what makes human brain cells human, and how human neuron circuitry functions as it does, says Dr. Taufik Valiante, neurosurgeon, scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute at UHN and co-senior author on the paper.