Canada’s emerging brain researchers are starting their careers just as technology is giving them the tools to explore the deepest secrets of the brain.
Congratulations to Dr. Zachary Pennington, an assistant professor in UBC’s department of psychology, who was named a Future Leader in Canadian Brain Research by Brain Canada.
The Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research program is built to equip early-career scientists to take high-risk, high-reward approaches to advance brain and mental health.
Dr. Pennington is one of 26 researchers awarded $100,000 to pursue innovative brain and mental health research with the potential to improve health outcomes for Canadians and beyond.
“I'm honoured to be among this incredible group of scientists and immensely grateful for the support of Brain Canada, which will allow my lab to address fundamental questions about how reward memories can be so long-lasting, influencing mental health conditions like addiction.”
Dr. Pennington will use this support towards his research project Drift of reward memories in the amygdala. This project could provide new insights into conditions like substance use disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and advance a paradigm-shifting framework for how long-term memories are maintained.
In each moment, our senses are bombarded by a vast array of stimuli. In order to make sense of this barrage, the brain engages learning processes that filter out irrelevant information, group stimuli into categories based upon their similarity, and associate stimuli based upon the predictive relationship between them (for example, if one stimulus routinely comes before another). Although the latter, ‘associative memories’, are fundamental to survival, they also contribute to devastating mental health conditions like substance use disorder ( SUD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In SUD, cues previously paired with drugs can come to drive drug-seeking. In PTSD, cues present at the time of trauma can later precipitate profound fear. Understanding the neural bases of these memories may allow them to be regulated. Dr. Zachary Pennington’s lab is focused on understanding the underlying brain processes that support associative memory formation and storage, as well as how they might be targeted in mental health treatment. His group utilizes a wide range of cutting edge technologies to record and manipulate brain circuits, while also developing novel technologies that other scientists can harness to advance discovery. Dr. Pennington’s Brain Canada Future Leaders project is focused on understanding how associative memories about rewards are maintained across the lifespan, using novel tools that allow the same cells in the amygdala to be recorded across long periods of time. This proposal, advancing a paradigm-shifting framework for how long-term memories are maintained, could provide fundamental insight into conditions like SUD and PTSD.
Dr. Pennington is also a member of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. His research utilizes innovative approaches to record and manipulate neural circuits in order to define their roles in stress, emotion, and learning.
The Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research program is made possible thanks to an anchor gift from the Azrieli Foundation, matched by Brain Canada through the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), a unique arrangement between the Government of Canada (Health Canada) and Brain Canada, with the support of additional generous donors and partners.
