Exposure to early life stress in humans and animals confers long-term consequences, affecting brain structure and function and increasing the risk for neuropsychiatric pathology. Early life stress can take different forms, such as parental loss, abuse, or poverty. The limited bedding (LB) paradigm has been used in animal models to simulate stress related to the lack of resources, affecting maternal care of her offspring. However, it is still unclear how the LB paradigm affects neonatal brain development, whether the reaching of specific neurodevelopmental milestones is modified differently in male and female offspring and whether a specific domain is preferentially affected. We examined daily reaching of physical, sensory, and motor milestones between P1-15 in offspring from LB and normal bedding (NB) mothers. We later tested open field locomotion and conditioned fear learning using the same animals as juveniles (P28). Animals subjected to the LB condition showed significant delays in achieving physical milestones, such as auditory canal opening; sensory milestones, such as ear twitching reflex and auditory startle response; and motor milestones, such as grasping reflex and surface righting reflex, compared to NB animals. Sex had no significant effect on some of these delays. At the juvenile stage, locomotor activity and conditioned fear response were comparable between groups and sex, suggesting that some of the maturational delays were compensated for after weaning for at least some behaviors. Supported by CIHR PJT162376 to CDW.

Early adversity modifies physical, sensory and motor neurodevelopmental milestones in rat pups

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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

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Early adversity modifies physical, sensory and motor neurodevelopmental milestones in rat pups

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