Three Psychology researchers awarded CIHR Project Grants



From concussion rehabilitation to understanding the brain’s decision-making processes, UBC psychology researchers are advancing health research with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

CIHR Project Grant competitions support researchers in building and conducting health-related research and knowledge translation projects, covering the full range of health research topics.

Three UBC Psychology researchers received funding from CIHR’s Fall 2024 Project Grant competition.

Dr. Noah Silverberg and project co-investigators received funding for the research project Personalized symptom mapping to understand and treat persistent post-concussion symptoms

Dr. Jason Snyder and project co-investigators received funding for the research project Understanding the amnestic side effects of electroconvulsive shock

Dr. Stan Floresco received a Project Grant – Priority Announcement: Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction for the research project Prefrontal-subcortical network mechanisms underlying risky decision making

The CIHR Fall Project Grant 2024 competition approved 373 research grants for a total investment of approximately $411M and 105 priority announcement grants were funded.

A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury. Concussions are very common. They typically result from falls, motor vehicle accidents, or sport/recreation collisions. At least 1 in 6 people who get a concussion have ongoing symptoms, such as headaches, poor sleep, difficulty concentrating, and irritability. Few treatments have proven effective for persistent concussion symptoms, in part because we do not have a good way to identify which symptoms worsen other symptoms in a given person (e.g., poor sleep making concentration and mood problems worse), and therefore which symptom should be treated first. A new method is available for creating a symptom "network" for an individual patient. The network is a type of map that shows which symptoms are most inter-connected with other symptoms. The main goal of the current study is to see if it is possible to get reliable symptom networks for individuals with concussion. We will recruit over 150 patients who seek hospital care for a concussion and are at risk for persistent symptoms. Participants will record their symptoms 5 times per day over 20 days on a smartphone app. Using this data, we will attempt to create symptom networks for each participant. We expect to demonstrate that most participants complete their daily recordings consistently and have a well-defined symptom network. Symptom networks could help doctors and therapists personalize treatment.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is widely used as a therapy for mental illness, and is the most effective treatment for patients who suffer from drug-resistant depression. Unfortunately, many patients avoid ECT treatment due to its side effects on memory. Generally, patients reports difficulties remembering information learned around the time of treatment, but the duration of the impairment and the exact types of memory that are impaired remains unclear. Minimizing these side effects not only requires identification of the types of memory that are affected, but also depends upon an understanding of how ECT affects brain circuits involved in memory. This is very difficult to examine in human patients, but can be probed using animal models of electroconvulsive shock (ECS). The current proposal will therefore use a mouse model of ECS to characterize how ECS affects memory and relevant neural circuits. One major consequence of ECS is the increased birth of newborn neurons (neurogenesis) in the hippocampus, a brain region centrally involved in memory. We propose that the addition of large amounts of new neurons disrupts hippocampal circuits, which causes amnesia shortly after ECS. Here we will examine how ECS alters the properties of new neurons, and we will test whether inhibition of neurogenesis spares memory in the face of ECS. Collectively, this project will generate important knowledge regarding the effects of ECS on cognition, which is needed to ultimately minimize side effects and improve treatment rates and outcomes for human ECT patients.

Impairments in decision making entailing cost/benefit evaluations about risks and rewards have been observed in a number of disorders such as schizophrenia, depression and drug addiction. The cognitive dysfunction associated with these disorders are thought to be due in part to dysfunction in pathways linking the frontal lobes to subcortical systems and neurochemical imbalances in brain dopamine levels. However, is unclear how these different brain systems work in concert to regulate different aspects of risk/reward decision making. We intend to clarify these issues using animal models of "gambling" behaviour. We will use cutting-edge techniques that can manipulate brain pathways with exquisite temporal and cellular precision, combined with those that allow us to monitor neural activity and neurochemical release to elucidate precisely when and how distinct neural networks are engaged during different phases of the decision process to promote adaptive vs maladaptive decisions. These studies will provide important new information about how different brain circuits interact to solve these types of risk/reward decision making problems. Furthermore, the information provided by these studies may yield important insight into the brain dysfunction that underlies impairments in this form of cognition associated with a number of psychiatric disorders.

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