Major investment for The Royal Clinical Brain Research Centre to understand mental illness, addiction

The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre unveils a new brain imaging platform. CTV’s Kimberley Fowler says it could help understand mental illness, addiction.

On Thursday, The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre unveiled one of the world’s most advanced brain imaging technology to better understand mental illness and addiction. It’s a state-of-the-art neuroimaging platform, promising to put Canada at the forefront of global brain research.

In partnership with Brain Canada, The Royal is announcing a $1.9 million grant to launch a first-of-its-kind brain imaging platform in Canada, giving researchers a new look inside the brain and creating the opportunity to transform mental health research.

Brain Canada president and CEO, Dr. Viviane Poupon says: “I’m a neuroscientist by training, so for me to see the future of neuroscience, the breakthroughs that are going to happen, and building capacity for the researchers, for me is always amazing.”

“We’re super excited to get to continue to grow this facility,” said Katie Dinelle, The Royal’s administrative director of the Clinical Brain Research Centre. “It has been here since 2016, and this is a big ‘next step’ for us.”

The state-of-the-art neuroimaging platform allows researchers to scan the brain three ways at once. An MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) provides detailed images of the brain, a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) acts a radioactive tracer to show brain activity and function, and an EEG (Electroencephalography) to measure electrical activity in the brain in real time.

Only three teams in the world use this brain scanning technology for an unprecedented look at how the brain works.

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“The idea with this grant is to combine all three of those imaging modalities to give us a very whole picture of the brain,” said Dinelle.

Dr. Georg Northoff, senior scientist at The Royal and Psychiatry professor at the University of Ottawa says “with depression you’re extremely sad, you have anxiety disorders, also your sense of self can be very different, or you see yourself only as negative. So, understanding the basic mental brain-mind connection for basic mental features also implies that we can learn something from mental disorders.”

The multi-modal imaging will also help researchers improve diagnostics and personalized treatments for mental health patients.

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