Research Leadership

PRESIDENT & CHIEF SCIENTIST, BAYCREST ACADEMY FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION AT BAYCREST CENTRE FOR GERIATRIC CARE; 
SANDRA A. ROTMAN CHAIR IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, ROTMAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Dr. Allison Sekuler is the Vice-President, Research, and the Sandra A. Rotman Chair at Baycrest Health Sciences. Dr. Sekuler joins Baycrest after a long and distinguished career as a Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University, where she was the first Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience (2001-2011). She is also the Chair of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada‘s (NSERC) Scholarships & Fellowships group along with being a member of NSERC’s Committee for Discovery Research.

The recipient of numerous awards for research, teaching and leadership, Dr. Sekuler has a notable record of scientific achievements in aging and vision science, cognitive neuroscience, learning and neural plasticity, and neuroimaging and neurotechnology, as well as vast experience in senior academic and research leadership roles.

-

Research Focus

My primary research focuses on cognitive interventions for healthy older adults, older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or adults recovering from stroke or traumatic brain injury. The goal of this research is to understand the cognitive mechanisms of the interventions, and to then use that information to help improve their efficacy. I am interested in whether the interventions improve the targeted function, whether they generalize to other cognitive tasks and to everyday functioning, and whether they change brain activity so that networks implicated in healthy (or younger) adults are recruited after treatment. Via collaboration with Dr. Carol Greenwood and Dr. Bradley MacIntosh and others, I am also conducting research on the cognitive and neural correlates of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). While there is now ample evidence of memory deficits associated with T2DM, information about how this plays out in terms of cerebral blood flow or the BOLD signal is lacking. Our goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of these mechanisms, and to ascertain how they are common or separable from the effects of a common co-morbidity of T2DM, namely hypertension.

Profile link: http://research.baycrest.org/nanderson 

Director, Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness;
Director, Anne & Allan Bank Centre for Clinical Research Trials;
Chair in Cognitive Neurology and Innovation;
Senior Scientist, Rotman Research Institute

--

Dr. Howard Chertkow is a remarkably distinguished cognitive neurologist whose contributions are admired across the world. Dr. Chertkow joins Baycrest and the University of Toronto from Montreal’s McGill University, where he served as Director of the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) and McGill University Bloomfield Centre for Research in Aging and was a Senior Investigator in the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. In his practice at the JGH, Dr. Chertkow diagnosed and treated patients with early stage Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and helped found and direct Canada’s largest memory clinic.
 
Dr. Chertkow will direct the new Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness, a research, education and clinical interdisciplinary program to develop and evaluate the most promising approaches to preventing cognitive decline. As its inaugural Director, Dr. Chertkow will assemble a state-of-the-art Clinical Trials Unit and further develop Baycrest’s translational research program in dementia to test the latest emerging therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions. He will also serve as a Clinical Advisor to the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), the largest venture of its kind in the global seniors’ care sector.
 
He is an exceptionally prolific researcher in the area of dementia, serving since 2014 as Scientific Director of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), which has brought together 400 leading dementia researchers in Canada.  Dr. Chertkow is an elected member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
 
His areas of research interest include: early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and prediction of deterioration in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI); the structure, organization, and function of the semantic memory component of long term memory, and its deterioration in dementia; localization of language and memory functions in the brain using functional imaging; and therapy of cognitive disorders in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia using neuromodulation approaches.

Profile link: http://research.baycrest.org/hchertkow

Research Focus

• Cognitive neuroscience of memory
• Memory disorders
• Semantic memory acquisition and neocortical plasticity
• Medial Temproal Lobe and remote memory
• Prefronal cortex and strategic control processes in memory
• Amnesia
• Confabulation
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Profile Link: http://research.baycrest.org/agilboa

-

-