blog

Michael:

The Canadian Society for Chronobiology (CSC) held its first conference from May 24-26 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A recently formed society, the CSC represents a diverse group of over 100 faculty and trainee members. Together, the membership has diverse research interests that probe the biological underpinnings of circadian and diurnal rhythms, and seek to understand their importance for behaviour, health, and mental disorders.

At this year’s conference, the Mrosovsky keynote lecture (“Melanopsin signalling: More surprises”) was given by Dr. Russell Foster of Oxford University. Increasingly, research is embracing the fact that many mental health disorders are accompanied by disturbed circadian rhythms, and that light is an important input to the entrainment and stabilization of these rhythms. Just last year, Shimon and I evaluated a related research paper that demonstrated that even though melanopsin-expressing neurons do not lead to conscious light-perception, they can mediate important effects on mood, learning, and performance.

In my own research with Dr Amir, we have sought to understand the factors that act to adjust daily rhythms of clock gene expression in the limbic forebrain and dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus. We have shown that many of these brain areas, which are also important for the regulation of motivation and emotion, exhibit rhythms that respond to restricted feeding schedules. Therefore, meals given in a predictable fashion at an appropriate time-of-day (e.g. daytime for diurnal humans), may be another avenue that could help to normalize and rehabilitate disrupted daily rhythms in behavior and physiology.

In conclusion, I am thankful to F1000 for providing me with the AFM Travel Grant, which allowed me to participate in this important Canadian meeting.

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You can read more of Michael and Shimon’s evaluations, here.