Greetings to all!
We would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday season and we send our wishes for a happy and healthy new year!
Thank you to everyone who attended our MCOS in November with Hamish Deery who discussed “Metabolic connectivity in ageing”. The recording from his talk can be found here and the slides here.
As a note, MCOS will be taking a brief hiatus in December.
We hope you will join us for our next MCOS on Friday, January 17, 2025, 22:00 15:00 CEST, 9:00 EDT with Mary C. Catanese, PhD (Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard medical school) who will discuss “Epigenetic alterations in white matter with age: impacts on structural connectivity and beyond”.
The registration link for the January MCOS can be found here!
1. We are pleased to announce the next MCOS talk featuring Mary C. Catanese, PhD!
Date: January 17th, 2025
Time: 22:00 AEST, 15:00 CET, 9:00 EST
Title: Epigenetic alterations in white matter with age: impacts on structural connectivity and beyond
Please join us for this 30 minute presentation to be followed by discussion (~25 minutes).
Please register here.
Abstract: Age related structural change in the healthy human brain has been associated with cognitive decline, however associated molecular alterations remain poorly understood. Positron emission tomography (PET) enables the in vivo investigation of molecular targets and can accelerate therapeutic development through their quantification. It has recently become possible to measure epigenetic machinery in the living human brain using the PET radiotracer [11C]Martinostat. This imaging agent targets a subset of class I histone deacetylases or HDACs. Epigenetic deacetylation of lysine residues of histone tails modifies chromatin in the regulation of gene expression. I am interested in HDACs as they are heritable and play critical roles in our response to the environment and are important in relation to cognitive processes including learning, memory and synaptic plasticity. Moreover, HDACs are implicated in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. In previous work an age-related increase in [11C]Martinostat uptake was observed with age in healthy individuals and localized to the white matter. This increase in uptake correlated and co-localized with decreased structural integrity. I will discuss my goal to extend this work to study epigenetic alterations in relation to major depressive disorder by examining the potential association of epigenetic alterations (altered uptake) in relation to symptom related networks. I will also discuss using imaging-guided postmortem research programs initiated for the dual purpose of informing data interpretation and interrogating HDAC-related biology. My ultimate goal is to help better understand molecular dysregulation in psychiatric disorders.
Mary Catherine Catanese, PhD is Faculty Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Behavior from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work is focused on better understanding molecular dysregulation in psychiatric disorders using a multidimensional approach, integrating neuroscience, neuroimaging and clinical questions to address patient needs.
The MCOS promotes rigor in research and resource sharing. We aim to hold MCOS every third Friday of the month, subject to change due to speaker availability.
Please stay tuned for the announcement of the upcoming MCOS and for reminders on social media!
2. We are pleased to announce the preprint of an MCWG article.
Title: Molecular connectivity studies in neurotransmission: a scoping review
Authors: Mario Severino, Débora Elisa Peretti, Marjorie Bardiau, Carlo Cavaliere, Matthieu Doyen, Gabriel Gonzalez-Escamilla, Tatiana Horowitz, Martin Nørgaard, Jhony Alejandro Mejia Perez, Matej Perovnik, Michael Rullmann, Dilara Steenken, Daniel Talmasov, Chunmeng Tang, Tommaso Volpi, Zhilei Xu, Alessandra Bertoldo, Vince D. Calhoun, Silvia Paola Caminiti, Xin Di, Christian Habeck, Sharna Jamadar, Daniela Perani, Arianna Sala, Vesna Sossi, Igor Yakushev, Joana B. Pereira, Mattia Veronese
The MCWG Outreach Council invites you to submit announcements or information about papers, conferences, presentations or other events or news related to brain and molecular connectivity as well as any job opportunities that you wish to share with the community!
Please share for consideration by the final day of each month using this form.
The MCWG is made up of four international and multidisciplinary councils dedicated to promoting molecular connectivity research via dissemination of methods, results, collaboration, and resource sharing (e.g. datasets, tools) within the scientific community. We encourage the neuroscientific community to take an integrative perspective in study of the brain connectome, where various methods including MRI-based techniques, electrophysiological tools, and molecular imaging advance our understanding of the brain. Please find fundamental questions outlined here: “Brain connectomics: time for a molecular imaging perspective?”
Our website can be found here. We also invite you to join the MCWG!
