Canada

maternal-fetal environment

fetal programming

hypothalamus

neurodevelopment

microglia

Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

![](https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/underline.prod/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/b9aea25343a87d5aac3b9367dc780974.jpg)



Please head to https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/registration-2021/ to register. 

CAN-ACN 2021

14th Canadian Neuroscience Meeting from August 23rd-25th

Microglia are the resident immune cells in the central nervous system (CNS). Originally thought to be primarily responsible for disposing of cellular debris and responding to neural insults, emerging research now shows that microglia are highly dynamic cells involved in a variety of neural processes, including development. The hypothalamus is a brain region critical for maintaining homeostatic processes such as energy balance, thirst, food intake, reproduction, and circadian rhythms. Given that microglia colonize the embryonic brain alongside key steps of hypothalamic development and that the loss of microglia causes obesity in newborn pups, consistent with a defect in neuroendocrine signaling, we explored how microglia influence these nearby hypothalamic progenitors. We found that embryonic microglia directly and indirectly interact with hypothalamic radial glial cells by both touching and clipping of their projections and also by releasing signaling cues, respectively. These interactions were increased following maternal stress, suggesting that fetal microglia might be sensors to the external environment. Combined, these data demonstrate that microglia can influence overall development of this important brain region, which might contribute to diseases later in life.

Embryonic hypothalamic microglia: a sensor for maternal stressors and potential mediator of neurodevelopmental diseases

technical paper

Spatial distribution of melanin-concentrating hormone receptor 1 in the ventral tegmental area

The role of GABAergic inhibition in object category recognition

Cognitive impairments in mice after targeted perineuronal net depletion in the medial prefrontal or retrosplenial cortex.

Exploring the effects of prior stressor experience and vicarious stress in juvenile and adult female rats

Investigating the effect of THC vapour exposure on stress reactivity in rats following an acute stressor

Pupil size anticipates exploration and predicts disorganization in prefrontal cortex

Would short-term, indirect social stress affect spatial learning and memory in either male, or female rats?

3Hippocampal theta rhythm modulation by the glutamatergic and serotonergic raphe

Tracing molecular and social pathways to sex differences in depression: An empirical analysis of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA)

Microglial cells after brain injuries: sexually dimorphic and lost in translation

poster

https://d3smihljt9218e.cloudfront.net/transcript/20902/subtitle/b1e392cc095c16ea36991db1f28c15ae.vtt

English (automatic)

Embryonic hypothalamic microglia: a sensor for maternal stressors and potential mediator of neurodevelopmental diseases

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Spatial distribution of melanin-concentrating hormone receptor 1 in the ventral tegmental area

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Microglial cells after brain injuries: sexually dimorphic and lost in translation