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Research infrastructures
The AMH Initiative benefits from a number of important infrastructures that enable research in translational psychiatry. In particular, the Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank (DBCBB), located at the Douglas Institute is one of the largest brain repositories in the world that contains brains from psychiatrically-characterized individuals. With an inventory of over 3,500 specimens, it distributes thousands of samples annually to qualified researchers throughout the world helping to advance fundamental research on mental illness.
Research programs
The AMH Initiative provides funding to support collaborative projects between McGill and MPIP researchers. These start-up funds are used towards activities for the pilot project, including trainee support and travel exchanges. Below is the list of funded collaborative projects that are currently in progress.
Large-scale integration of single-cell transcriptome data to assess symptom-based molecular markers spanning mental illnesses
This collaboration will generate one of the largest human single-cell datasets to date with data from diseased and neurotypical brains
Does insulin have a causal role in the relationship between early life adversity and altered executive function phenotypes?
This study will determine if ELA is critical for the causal association between fasting insulin and altered executive functioning phenotypes
miR-151a-5p in plasma brain-derived extracellular vesicles as a prognostic biomarker of differential response to antidepressant treatment
Studying the impact of early-life adversity on hippocampal oligodendrocytes and myelination: a translational study
The first comprehensive study of oligodendrocyte-lineage cells and myelination in the hippocampus of humans and mice exposed to ELA
Implementing deep learning tools to measure social behavior in male and female mice prior and following social defeat stress in adolescence
Application of deep learning tools will allow for more ethologically relevant study of adolescent social defeat stress on behaviour and dopamine signaling
AMH postdoctoral fellowship program
Through this program, the AMH Initiative awarded funding to support trainees at the postdoctoral level. Congratulations to the 2021-2022 award recipients and their projects!
- Reza Rahimian, PhD, for his project entitled, Characterizing the innate immune response in the brain of depressed suicides who were victims of child abuse
- Euclides José de Mendonça Filho, PhD, for his project entitled, Development and implementation of a pediatric battery of biological stress activation
