These new findings suggest that structural changes in this collection of brain regions may be critical to Alzheimer’s disease onset and this could eventually lead to patients being diagnosed earlier.

“The default network was a vulnerable area and it was more vulnerable in those who would go on to develop the disease,” says 91��ɫ psychology Professor Gary Turner of the Cognitive Aging Neuroscience and Neurointervention Lab in the Faculty of Health.

The network of brain regions highlighted in red and yellow show atrophy in both healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. These regions��are susceptible to normal aging and dementia

Turner and Cornell University Professor , the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow and director of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at Cornell, found that the brain’s grey matter in the default network shrinks with normal aging across the lifespan, but it does so much more sharply in those who go on to develop dementia, as well as those with a genetic predisposition for the disease. These changes were also associated with declines in general cognitive ability.

“Our data suggest that these structural brain changes may be detectable many years before behavioral signs appear,” says Turner.��This could allow for much earlier interventions for Alzheimer’s disease than is currently possible. Their paper, “”, was published this month online and in-print in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Turner and Spreng, co-principal investigators, measured brain volume using the brain images of 848 people, from age 18 to 94, to determine the role of the default network in neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s. They were able to analyze data collected as part of the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies, which provided a cross-sectional data set, and the longitudinal Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, which looked at the same people multiple times over several years. By combining these two large datasets, the authors were able to measure brain changes from young to older adulthood and from healthy aging to neurodegenerative disease.

Gary Turner

“What we were really interested in doing with this work was looking at how the brain is altered across the lifespan,” says Turner. “The default network is already known to be implicated in Alzheimer’s disease[…]but we believe this is one of the first reports demonstrating these structural network changes across the lifespan from young to older adulthood and into Alzheimer’s disease. And we were able to look at changes simultaneously across the whole default network.”

Core areas of the network include the posterior cingulate cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, the medial temporal lobes and the lateral parietal cortex.

They also found that these declines in brain volume were greater in the cohort who carried the APOE4 gene, a genetic marker for potentially developing Alzheimer’s disease, and those with cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer’s. This shows that structural changes in the default network may be associated with genetic risk of the disease.

“These results help us to better understand the pattern of brain change that occurs across the lifespan and into neurodegenerative disease,” says Turner, who received a two-year Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant of $85,000 to complete the project. “While not a central focus of this study, we hope that with further exploration these findings may, over time,��help to inform diagnostic and prognostic decision-making in the clinic.”

In the future, Turner said this research could lay the groundwork for a new series of studies leading to better biomarkers for the disease. “Certainly, these findings highlight the importance of this network as a constellation of brain regions that warrants further study in terms of early identification of the disease.”

The focus of Turner’s research, he says, is to translate these cognitive neuroscience research findings into rehabilitation interventions to enhance cognitive functioning in healthy aging and acquired brain injury and slow the trajectory of cognitive decline in brain disease.

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“For children living in poverty, there are often conditions present that can negatively affect cognitive development,” says Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health. “Our study is the first to show that bilingualism can override some of the cognitive deficits associated with low socio-economic status.”

Ellen Bialystok

The study, published in the journal , followed a total of 80 second-graders from low-income families. Half of the children were first or second generation immigrants to Luxembourg, originally from Northern Portugal, who spoke both Luxembourgish and Portuguese on a daily basis. The other half of the children lived in Northern Portugal and spoke only Portuguese.

The children were first tested on their vocabulary and asked to name items presented in pictures. Both groups completed the task in Portuguese and the bilingual children also completed the task in Luxembourgish.

To examine how the children represented knowledge in memory, the researchers asked them to find a missing piece that would complete a specific geometric shape. They also measured how much visual information the children could keep in mind at a given time. The children then participated in tasks that looked at their ability to direct and focus their attention when distractions were present.

Although the bilingual children knew fewer words than their monolingual peers, and did not show an advantage for memory tasks, they performed better on the control task in which they needed to direct and focus their attention when distractions were present.

The researchers say in-school immersion programs could be a promising tool toward reducing the achievement gap between more- and less-advantaged children by contributing to the construction of a sound cognitive foundation.

"In previous research, bilingualism has been shown to be a powerful force in shaping developing minds," says Bialystok. "This is the first evidence that it can also compensate for some of the cognitive disadvantages associated with poverty and boost children's executive control ability, arguably the most important cognitive system we have."

Psychological Science is the journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

For more University news, photos and videos, visit the homepage.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The saying, “looking at things with fresh eyes”, may be more than just a metaphor, according to new studies led by Professor Kari Hoffman of 91��ɫ’s Centre for Vision Research, which have been published in scholarly journals.

Left: Kari Hoffman

While searching for experiments to use in a research methods course, Hoffman took a fresh look at an old visual perception test and realized it might hold a clue to understanding how we see things and when we remember them. Hoffman says the insight came when she was reviewing results of a flicker-change blindness test, a simple classroom experiment used to show how difficult it is for people to see the difference in two almost identical images or scenes. She realized that what was once a trick of the eye was no longer effective due to her memory of the images.

That led Hoffman and biology graduate student Vivian Chau (right) to develop an experiment that would monitor the eye movement of test subjects as they tried to solve the visual puzzle. What they found was striking: when the viewer remembered the image, the eye movement that indicated the time it took to search and locate the part of the scene that had changed was dramatically reduced compared to when they were viewing it for the first time. This suggested that it was possible to tell when a person was looking at an image for the first time and when they recognized it from memory.

“Not everyone shows the fast search times, though,” says Hoffman. “A participant with amnesia failed to remember the changing objects and his eyes told the story. This participant had suffered damage to his medial temporal lobe, a region which is especially affected in Alzheimer’s patients and has been associated with memory function in healthy aging,” said Hoffman. “So we now have a task to help us study how that brain region functions to support memory formation.”

The study results were published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience ().

After seeing that eye movements could reflect memory, the outcome of brain processing, Hoffman and her lab team wondered if eye movements might also take part in influencing the inputs – how our brain processes images. In a second study, she and psychology graduate student Adrian Bartlett (right) found that eye movement is also an indication of the brain gearing up to process an image – a kind of neural “smart refresh” that created optimal conditions for seeing.

Hoffman says there is a noticeable change in a subject’s brain wave patterns when images are viewed with moving eyes as opposed to the more standard experimental method of viewing images with a fixed eye. “The neural populations become more synchronized,” she explains, “this can make processing an image easier and faster.” ��They found that the brain has a kind of “smart refresh” period when it gets ready to process visual information. If the presentation isn’t synched to that cycle, the brain is not as good at processing the image.

Designers of learning materials can use this knowledge to create visual presentations that interact with a viewer’s movements, making the displays more easily processed and therefore more effective. The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience ().

Illustration above shows the path the viewer’s eyes followed when scanning the photo for the first time and then again the next day

“Although scientists often study movement as a separate process from perception and cognition,” Hoffman says, “our results reveal examples of how eye movements are intertwined with perceptual and cognitive processes. In both studies, the eye movements give us a more complete picture of perceptual and memory processes,” Hoffman explains.

Exercising the brain in this way, Hoffman says, may be optimal for neural rewiring or “plasticity” that leads to better learning, more efficient performance and recovery after loss of function, such as following stroke. “This provides support for a more integrative view of brain function – one in which actions help shape brain performance.”

For more information on the Perception & Plasticity Lab, visit their website.

The studies, which were conducted in collaboration with researchers Jennifer Ryan, Shayna Rosenbaum and Nikos Logothetis, were funded through an NSERC Discovery Grant and an Ontario MRI Early Researcher Award. Hoffman is a professor in psychology & biology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health and a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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, which will take place throughout downtown��Toronto, features the work of more than 500 local, national and international artists��

Theatre Professor Shawn Kerwin collaborated with Laurel McDonald to create "", an “art-app” for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The app is one of five interactive installations featured in Technological Displacement, a production of the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, at the Bata Shoe Museum on Bloor Street.

��

Above: Professor Shawn Kerwin has developed a new art-app for the BlackBerry PlayBook. It will debut at Nuit Blanche.

"Alone Together" uses poetic wordplay and expressive videos to remind us that we can always reframe our relationships. Kerwin developed the piece during her five-month residency at the CFC Media Lab earlier this year.

Technological Displacement is one of the 38 projects in Zone A, whose overarching theme, Restaging the Encounter, attempts to capture the fleeting moment when the political become poetic.

Another project in Zone A is by 91��ɫ visual arts��alumna and multimedia artist (BA ‘73), located in Barbara Ann Scott Park at the heart of College Park. The work transforms a memorable phrase from Canada's national anthem into a giant haiku poem, made from flowers and cut wood floating in a water-filled pond.

Left: True Patriot Love by visual arts��grad Chrysanne Stathacos

The theme of Zone B is The Future of the Present. The works on view in this sector use new technologies to form a vocabulary for a non-pictorial art.

Visual arts grad (MFA ‘96) and her collaborator Lance Winn are contributing , a multimedia work that addresses the nature of surveillance, mechanization and control. Installed at Ryerson University’s loading dock on Gerrard Street, Projektor resembles a prison tower, with a roaming spotlight video projection that exposes a barren prison yard and a prisoner who attempts to escape the light.

Collaborators since 2002, Jones and Winn share a common interest in the mechanisms of reproduction and the impact they have on representation. Their work focuses on the edges of the two-dimensional image and a desire to see beyond the limits of the frame.

Also in Zone B is , an installation at 62 Bond Street by film alumnus (BFA Spec. Hons. ‘02). ��Reibling argues that the dolly shot (where the movie camera glides along rails) is the most revered, powerful and evocative moment in the making of a film.�� To create 12 Hour Dolly, a film crew will set up a circular dolly track and shoot film continuously for 12 hours straight. Located in the centre of the track is a makeshift stage with a single stool.�� One by one, spectators are invited to sit centre-stage and participate in the making of the film, which will be streamed live onto an adjacent wall.

Right: Dylan Reibling's take on the dolly shot took 12 hours to film

Reibling is an award-winning filmmaker whose work, exploring the mechanics of narrative,��ranges from stop-motion animation and drama to interactive prototypes.

Two other 91��ɫ film alumni, (MFA ‘11) and (MA ‘09) co-created , a sound, video and interactive performance installation in the form of a "silent disco" on the P1 floor of The Atrium on Bay’s underground parking lot.��The work grew from the artists’ desire to explore the troubling policies entrenched in national and territorial border politics, and to question access and mobility within those borders. Participants are invited to listen with headphones to musical tracks��with lyrics referencing the text inside passports, and to watch related video projections.��

Bamboat��is a film and video artist whose work centres around aspects of diasporas, critiques of nationalism, and the ways in which the queer body relates to sites of mobility.�� Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and media artist whose work explores performativity, memory, statehood, space and architecture.

Left: Border Sounds is a sound, video and interactive performance installation by two 91��ɫ film alumni

Maria Coates, a graduate student in art history and curatorial studies, is interning with the curator of Zone C, 91��ɫ art history alumnus Nicholas Brown (MA ‘08), who comes to Nuit Blanche after a two-year stint as curator of Toronto’s Red Bull 381 Projects.

Brown’s theme for Zone C is You had to go looking for it. Convening in the wake of the recent civil unrest around the G20 meeting in the city, the project invites the masses to transform and occupy Toronto's financial district. Artists will open up the area as a place of otherworldly encounter, ambivalent assembly and enthusiastic competition, inverting and misusing the symbolic language of corporate capitalism.

Coates, whose research centres on contemporary Latin American art, is working on , an installation by Mexican-born, Los Angeles-based artist Camilo Ontiveros. The project is a large-scale vigil that invites audience members to light a candle in commemoration of the lost lives of migrant workers in Ontario. It reaches out to individual passersby as well as organizations that represent the interests of labour, including United Food and Commercial Workers Canada and the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.

“What attracts��me to Camilo's project in the context of this international, corporate-sponsored, city-run festival is how it offers a space for pause and reflection in honour of something that we tend to overlook,” said Coates.

Coates appreciates the opportunity to intern with Brown – a relationship brokered by Art History Graduate Program Director Anna Hudson. “It’s been great to work with a recent grad whom I could relate to through discussions of contemporary art and what’s entailed in becoming a curator in Toronto. Nick has been a great mentor in guiding me through the process and leaving room for me to perform in a meaningful way,” she said.

Also in Zone C are a performance installation by visual art alumnus (MFA ‘10) and Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, and by John Notten, a visual arts and education graduate (BEd ’87, BFA ‘87).

Right: The Tie Break is a performative re-enactment of the most riveting episode in the history of tennis

Pugen, whose work has been featured in publications such as Artforum and Adbusters, is a recipient of the K.M Hunter Award for Interdisciplinary Art. His collaborative piece, The Tie Break, is a performative re-enactment of the “most riveting episode in the … history [of tennis]” (ESPN): the legendary fourth set tie-break at the 1980 Wimbledon men’s singles finals between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. The matches will take place hourly at 25 minutes after the hour at Commerce Court, North Plaza on King Street.

���dzٳٱ��’s Intensity invites the audience to explore the presentation centre for a luxury condominium development, but delivers a vast and sprawling tent city.��As in the 2002 eviction of Toronto’s waterfront tent city, viewers are forced to move out of their temporary tent homes every few minutes. Installed in the Arnell Plaza of the Bay-Adelaide Centre, this all-night drama echoes the realities of makeshift communities around the world that rise up in the wake of human tragedy.

Left: John Notten's Intensity delivers a vast and sprawling tent city. Viewers must move out of their temporary homes every few minutes in a re-enactment of the 2002 eviction of residents from Toronto's waterfront tent city.

Toronto’s sixth annual Nuit Blanche kicks off at 6:59pm on Saturday, Oct. 1 and runs to daybreak on Sunday, Oct. 2.

With 134 installations, the celebration covers the city’s entire downtown area, from Roncesvalles Avenue in the west all the way to the Distillery Historic District in the east, and from Bloor Street to the Lake Shore. Admission to all events is free.

Photos courtesy��of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The study, published this summer, examined the effects of exercises that build positivity on more than 250 participants. It found that people with needy personalities reported lower self-esteem after listening to three or four uplifting songs of their choosing every day over the course of a week.

Needy individuals suffer from deep insecurities and need interpersonal support to ward off acute feelings of despair and loneliness. They tend to be submissive in interpersonal relationships, feel helpless and fear abandonment.

“We were quite surprised at this result,” says study lead author Myriam Mongrain (right), professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health. “Until now, the vast majority of studies have suggested that positive psychology exercises result in either improvements for participants or no change over time. This result hints that self-help exercises may actually be detrimental for those with needy personalities,” she says.

Study participants were randomly assigned one of three daily exercises: recalling five things that they were grateful for over the course of the day; listening to three or four uplifting songs of their choosing; or writing about a specific memory from their early life (the latter was used as a control exercise). Participants then completed questionnaires to measure changes in their mood and outlook; these same measures were administered at intervals of one, three and six months post-study.

Those with needy personalities reported no significant benefits from the gratitude exercise, while the music exercise dragged them down further. Highly self-critical individuals experienced the greatest improvement to their subjective happiness when they practiced the gratitude exercise. They also demonstrated a larger increase in self-esteem and greater decrease in physical symptom severity in both the gratitude condition and the music condition.

“We hypothesized that listening to happy music was a kind of self-soothing that would benefit people with needy personalities. However, this independent activity, which involved no interaction with others, may have had a negative effect on participants,” says Mongrain.

“Needy people rely on secure intimate bonds with others in order to experience well-being, and they may have felt frustrated with the lack of improvement and expressed their disappointment on the outcome measures. Given these results, one-on-one counselling is likely more appropriate for this personality type.”

The study was published in August 2011 in the Journal of Positive Psychology. It is co-authored by Susan Sergeant, a PhD student in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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This world premiere is the season opener for Toronto’s DanceWorks and kicks off Harbourfront Centre’s dance series NextSteps 11/12.

The show is co-produced by Native Earth Performing Arts and Signal Theatre, a company Greyeyes founded for this production.

Right: Ceinwen Gobert��performs in from thine eyes

Greyeyes��developed from thine eyes in collaboration with Aboriginal writer Yvette Nolan. It is set to an original score composed by former 91��ɫ theatre student Miquelon Rodriguez and Sharon Hann (BFA ‘06) designed the costumes.����

The title is taken from a passage in the Koran: "Lift the veil from thine eyes”. It refers to making the passage from this life into the next and seeing ourselves and others truthfully.����

The six performers, including dance grad Shannon Litzenberger (MA ‘05), express the struggle to find meaning at the end of their lives as they confront their deepest fears, most cherished memories and each other.��

“These thoughts about mortality came from conversations with my mother before she passed,” said Greyeyes. “In my culture [Plains Cree], we don’t view death as an end. It is the next step on a journey. For me as an Aboriginal artist, it’s essential that my company communicates my worldview and cosmology.”��

The cast has been rehearsing on campus in the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts over the summer and moves into the Joseph G. Green Studio Theatre in the Centre for Film & Theatre next week for additional preparation.��

Left: Michael Greyeyes

91��ɫ theatre Professor James McKernan is serving as technical director and has involved the production in colleague Peter McKinnon’s research project on sustainability in live performance. “Building on existing data and tools already in use in the construction industry, we’re using from thine eyes as a test piece to create a budgeting tool that tracks the carbon footprint of a show, similar to the way designers track financial expenditures on their materials,” said McKernan.����

The design team has been designing a shadow production, tracking the materials they would have used were sustainability not a factor. At the end of the production, the two tracking documents will be compared, so the sustainability gains can be measured. The extra time and work involved in designing two editions of the show and sourcing the most sustainable materials available is where support for the project from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada has been most valuable, McKernan noted.��

Left: James McKernan

“We’re learning that sustainability at this stage in the game is all about long-term planning,” he said. “We’ve found that the eco-option is rarely more expensive – it’s just sometimes harder to find and more time consuming to buy. Hopefully, as the demand grows and as designers learn the best sources for these materials, it will become even easier to reduce the impact of a production on our environment.”��

from thine eyes runs Sept. 22 to 24 at Harbourfront Centre’s Enwave Theatre. For more information and tickets, visit the ��website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Convened��by the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples at 91��ɫ,��the��theme of the institute is��“Slavery, Memory, Citizenship”. It��marks the International Year for People of African Descent, as designated by the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO).��

As part of the proceedings, Michaëlle Jean (right),��former governor general of Canada,��current UNESCO special envoy to Haiti and the recipient of a 2007��honorary doctor of laws degree from 91��ɫ's Osgoode Hall Law School, will announce the launch of the UNESCO Slave Route Project: Itineraries of African Canadian Memory initiative��during her keynote address on Aug. 23.

The project is��a long-term initiative to identify important sites of memory that relate to people of African descent in Canada. The (part of the organization's Division of Cultural Policies��& Intercultural Dialogue) has recognized that historic sites associated with people of African descent in Canada constitute a UNESCO “Itinerary of Memory”.��

“We are pleased that 91��ɫ’s Harriet Tubman Institute is hosting the program on slavery, memory and citizenship, with presentations by many distinguished guests, including Canada’s former governor general, the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean,” says 91��ɫ’s President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. “Our Tubman Institute has played – and continues to play – a leading role in fostering debate, informing public policy and striving to resolve current social injustices as they relate to racism and slavery.”

The Itineraries of African Canadian Memory initiative��will detail how the experiences of Africans and their descendants “have contributed to building this nation from 1604 through the present day,” says 91��ɫ Distinguished Research Professor Paul Lovejoy, Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History and director of the Harriet Tubman Institute. “The goal of the project is to raise consciousness about the diversity of the Canadian past.”

Lovejoy, along with noted Underground Railroad historian and award-winning author Karolyn Smardz Frost and historian and genealogist Hilary Dawson, are working with community partners, government agencies and heritage organizations to identify sites evocative of the African Canadian experience. The purpose of the��Itineraries of African Canadian Memory initiative��is to establish the process by which Canadian sites related to slavery and slave resistance can be officially recognized by UNESCO. Eleven sites designated by the Ontario Heritage Trust have already received UNESCO recognition.

Delegates at the��2011 Summer Institute��will explore African migrations, slavery and the slave trade from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Ongoing��research projects by scholars at the Tubman Institute and its partners will be highlighted as part of the institute's proceedings. The event is associated with��a Major Collaborative Research Initiative funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The week-long Summer Institute will provide a forum for senior scholars, junior researchers, teachers from all levels of education, librarians and public policy-makers to discuss historic and contemporary issues of forced servitude (slavery); the ways in which slavery is researched, taught and publicly presented (memory); and the impact of this public memory on status, placement and recognition in the national policy (citizenship). The Summer Institute will be broadcast via video podcasts to off-site workshops held simultaneously in Haiti.

Plenary sessions will be delivered by 91��ɫ Professors Lovejoy,��Smardz Frost and Annie Bunting; Toyin Falola, distinguished professor, University of Texas; Francine Saillant, CELAT, Laval; Amani Whitfield, University of Vermont; Myriam Cottias, CNRS, Paris; Sir Hilary Beckles, principal, University of the West Indies, Barbados; Maria Elisa Velázquez, president, UNESCO Slave Route Project; and Blaise Tchikaya, executive board, the African Union. These sessions will be held daily from Aug. 22 to 27, between 9am and 11am.

Jean Augustine (left), Fairness Commissioner of Ontario and the first African Canadian woman to be elected to the Parliament of Canada, will be the keynote speaker at the closing luncheon on Aug. 26. Augustine is the recipient of a 2011��honorary doctor of laws degree from 91��ɫ, and has donated her archival and parliamentary materials to 91��ɫ's Faculty of Education,��thus creating the opportunity to��establish 91��ɫ’s Jean Augustine Chair in Education in the New Urban Environment.

“The Summer Institute showcases the strength of interdisciplinary research at 91��ɫ,” says Robert Haché, 91��ɫ’s vice-president research & innovation. “Researchers work together with partners, community groups, international and external organizations to disseminate new knowledge and improve the accessibility of information across various sectors in society, while addressing complex social issues.”

For more information, including a list of speakers and sessions, visit the website.����

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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[Fourth-year undergraduate student] Aidan Moir is one of the research assistants working on the with Professor Anne MacLennan [Communications Studies, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies].

"The objective of the Remembering Radio project is to record and save early memories of radio in the lives of everyday Canadians," Moir said. "The hope is to discover more about the role of radio in the homes and lives of ordinary Canadians from its inception."

The phase of the project involving local seniors is centred on listeners’ memories from the 1930s, he added, noting that studies of radio audience, their opinions, likes and dislikes, program preferences, and the role of Canadian radio, are rare.

"The information that the listeners from that time period have to share is very valuable to this project," she said.

The study is Canada-wide, but is weak in a number of areas, especially in British Columbia, Moir said.

She assured that no one interviewed for the study will incur cost.

Those taking part in the Remembering Radio will become part of history as the project will be folded into a book.

This research has been awarded a grant to interview Canadian listeners.�� Email amaclenn@yorku.ca for the quickest response. ��You can also leave messages at 416-736-2100 extension 33857.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Hundreds of studies carried out since have established the power of what is now known as the “spacing effect”��– how people can better remember faces, words and historical facts if they spread out their study time rather than attempting one long cram session.

But most of the experiments have involved adults, said 91��ɫ psychologist Nicholas Cepeda [Faculty of Health], who has begun to study the spacing effect in Ontario classrooms. He wants to come up with simple recommendations that will help teachers capitalize on the effect to improve how much students learn and retain.

Cepeda's studies include: What kind of spacing is most effective? Should lessons and subsequent review sessions be a week apart? Or is a gap of several months better? Are cumulative tests an effective teaching tool because they cover material taught earlier in the year as well as the most recent lessons?

Cepeda is probing deeper questions as well. What is it about the brain that makes the spacing effect so powerful? What can it tell us about how memory works? Cepeda was recently awarded a $100,777 grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to buy equipment that will allow him to measure the electrical activity in the brains of children when they learn something for the first time, compared to when they study it again several months later.

He expects that re-learning material a second or third time is the result of different, more intense brain activity. “If you have forgotten the material, the brain may think it has to pay more attention.”

Cepeda also wants to assess the value of cumulative tests, which include questions on material students learned earlier in the year and could be a valuable teaching tool.

He said it is frustrating how little research is done to translate the discoveries psychologists and neuroscientists make about memory and learning into effective teaching strategies. In the United States, the Institute of Education Sciences funds this kind of research, but there is no equivalent agency in Canada, said Cepeda, who has applied to the US institute to do more studies in Toronto classrooms.

“As psychologists, we are sometimes scared to tell teachers what to do because we may end up telling them to do something that works in the lab that doesn’t work in the real world. We really do need to be testing these things in the classroom.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has awarded 91��ɫ $274,689 in infrastructure funding to support the research of three 91��ɫ professors.

,��professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Health and a member of the Muscle Health Research Centre, will receive $79,260 to support his research on muscle microcirculation in health and diseases. Birot’s research examines how peripheral vascular disease (PVD) affects key molecular mechanisms that regulate the formation of blood vessels in muscles. PVD is characterized by insufficient blood supply in leg muscles, leading to suffering, reduced mob ility and eventually amputation. ��PVD affects more than one million Canadians and is a frequent complication for patients with obesity, Type 2 diabetes or chronic heart failure.

Right: Olivier Birot

Nicholas Cepeda, professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health, will receive $100,777 to establish a developmental cognitive neuroscience laboratory for research on learning and memory, cognitive flexibility and musical training. His research has shown a 300 per cent improvement in students’ long-term recall of factual information, merely by changing the timing of when a particular curriculum item is taught and re-taught − with no increase in teaching time. The project’s musical training research will provide information about the brain functions of musicians and non-musicians, including processing speed, working memory, inhibition, attentional control and task-switching skills.

Left: Nicholas Cepeda

,��professor and a Canadian Institutes��of Health Research New Investigator in the��Department of Biology in��91��ɫ's , will receive $94,652 to support multi-faceted research in integrative neuroendocrinology and physiology. His research on the neuroendocrine regulation of growth, reproduction and body weight in fish could help aquaculture industry to improve the feeding, growth and reproduction of cultured fish. The funding also provides critical equipment for cutting-edge research on the neuroendocrine defects underlying diabetes and obesity, and may help to develop innovative pharmacological and cell-based therapies to help Canadians and others in their fight against these metabolic diseases.

Left: Suraj Unniappan

“These projects demonstrate 91��ɫ’s excellence in health and science research,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation. “The questions Professor Birot's and Cepeda's projects explore concerning muscle health and learning and cognition reflect the relevance and disciplinary strengths of our psychology and kinesiology researchers, while Professor Unniappan's project illustrates the industrial applications that may flow from support for basic research. We fully support the importance of the CFI’s investments in state-of-the-art infrastructure and the world-class research they enable at 91��ɫ.”

91��ɫ’s projects were part of a in 's Leaders Opportunity Fund, which provides Canadian researchers with the necessary tools to carry out a range of frontier research. The funding supports 339 leading researchers and 245 projects at 48 Canadian research institutions.

Gary Goodyear, minister of state (science��& technology), made the announcement in Ottawa, Ontario on Jan.��21. “Supporting science is key to Canada’s future economic growth,” said Goodyear. “Our government's commitment to helping universities attract and retain world-leading research talent will lead to discoveries that improve Canadians' quality of life and create new jobs."

“Access to modern, cutting-edge equipment and facilities is imperative in the 21st century," said Gilles��Patry, president��& CEO of the CFI. “For more than a decade, the CFI has provided thousands of world-class researchers with the tools they need to do their work. Without the right infrastructure, they simply wouldn't be in Canada.”

A complete list of CFI recipients is available on the website.

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of Janice Walls and Melissa Hughes

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