Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Concussions are an important problem facing Canadian healthcare. They are caused by a rapid change in head movement, like striking an object, and produce a variety of symptoms like learning and memory problems, increased anxiety, and depression. Concussions are most likely to happen during falls, motor vehicle accidents, recreational sports, assault, and combat. Given that most individuals cannot avoid all of these potential risks, it is important to understand how to diagnose a concussion, why concussions produce these symptoms, and how to treat them. These problems are especially important in the context of repeat injury. Individuals that receive one concussion are more likely to receive more. Multiple concussions tend to produce more severe symptoms, last longer, and may even lead to Alzheimer-like neurodegenerative diseases. Unfortunately there are no definitive diagnostic tools or treatments available, and it is still relatively unknown why successive concussions produce more severe symptoms. Several animal models of concussion have been developed to investigate these problems. These models have provided invaluable information for developing treatment and diagnostic strategies, but they have some important weaknesses. Notably, previous models require the subject to be anaesthetised, which does not happen in human concussions, and can protect the brain from damage. Furthermore, the majority of concussion models have used adult males, even though population data shows that adolescents are at a particularly high risk for single and repeat concussions, and that females are more likely to have long-lasting symptoms. Male and female, as well as young and mature brains are physiologically different, and concussion research should reflect this. I have developed a new animal model for concussion without anaesthesia, which I will use to investigate how repeat concussions affect memory and mood in young male and female rats.