Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Twenty percent of Canadians suffer from a mental illness. Learning how chemicals work in the brain will help us treat mental illness. Many mental illnesses are treated by fixing levels of a brain chemical called dopamine. We know that another chemical called insulin can control dopamine levels in the brains of animals. This is important because this means one day we may be able to use brain insulin to treat mental illness. But we do not know if insulin controls dopamine levels in the brains of people. We made a new brain imaging tool that can tell us how insulin controls dopamine levels in the brains of people. This new tool will also tell us if insulin does not work at changing dopamine in the brains of people with mental illness. This tool will help us learn how brain chemistry works. This will help us one day make better treatments for Canadians suffering from mental illness.