Newly arrived duo adds breadth to growing cross-campus expertise in neurosciences
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Now that's putting their heads together. Arriving this fall at U of G, Profs. Carol Armstrong and John Armstrong bring their studies of varied aspects of brain development and physiology to the Department of Biomedical Sciences — and add significant breadth and depth to the University's expanding expertise in the fast-growing field of neurosciences.
The husband-and-wife duo brings “his-and-hers” views of brain science to their respective research fields. She studies how the brain develops; his interest lies in how the brain works.
“We have common interests, but we come at them from different sides,” says Carol Armstrong.
They arrived in September, fresh from post-docs at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. There, Carol worked with Dennis O'Leary, a top developmental neurobiologist, in studies of development of the visual system. She used chick models to look at how wiring is laid down between the developing eye and the brain's visual area.
Plenty can go wrong along the complicated sequence of tightly choreographed events that need to happen for vision to develop normally, she says. Stressing her basic approach, she adds that her work may help clinicians understand visual defects and how to correct them. Other researchers may use her work to help in testing visual acuity or depth perception or to look closer at the genetics behind heritable visual disorders.
Carol now uses chick models to study how the early brain develops, particularly pattern formation in the cerebellum, or the brain's motor co-ordinator.
John Armstrong uses knockout mice — rodents with a gene whose function is disrupted or “knocked out” — to probe how synapses work in the brain. Connections between individual neurons — or, more precisely, missed connections — may affect behaviour and learning.
He brought to Guelph a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression in the United States. That funding will allow him to investigate brain function with potential clinical applications.
For instance, one particular synapse is involved in temporal lobe epilepsy, the most prevalent form of the disorder. John hopes to learn more about what happens at synapses to trigger seizures.
At the Salk Institute, he worked with Stephen Heinemann, a top neurobiologist who has studied the role of glutamate brain receptors in epileptic-type seizures. Referring to the institute's polio-vaccine namesake, John says Jonas Salk was a proponent of basic science, not merely clinical studies.
That message resonated with the Armstrongs, who had gone to California just as the Salk's Sydney Brenner was receiving the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Recalling their joint arrival at the institute's molecular neurobiology laboratory as post-doctoral researchers, John says: “One of our first things was to go to a champagne reception honouring Brenner and other Nobel laureates.”
Not bad timing for a pair of transplanted Canadian neuroscientists looking to establish themselves in the field. Originally from Calgary, Carol earned her PhD there in cell biology and anatomy in 2001. John, who hails from North Bay, studied behavioural neurosciences at Carleton University and went to Dalhousie University for a post-doc.
That's where they met and married while Carol was completing her master's degree. When she returned to Calgary for her doctorate, John accepted a medical research fellowship there and essentially reinvented himself as a brain physiologist. They've worked as a kind of neurosciences tag team ever since, although they've never actually worked together in the lab.
In the Department of Biomedical Sciences, they're establishing separate research space. She's upstairs in the Reproductive Biology Laboratory; he's downstairs in the Institute for Animal-Human Links in Health Science Research, a centre intended to promote collaborative research in biomedical sciences linking human and animal health.
They also plan to investigate research and teaching ties in other departments within the Ontario Veterinary College and across campus, including the departments of Psychology, Integrative Biology, Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, and Cellular and Molecular Biology.
They're part of a rapidly growing group of neuroscience experts on campus, says Prof. Neil MacLusky, chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, which now has five neuroscientists hired in the past four years. MacLusky, who studies the effects of steroid hormones on the brain, also arrived at Guelph this fall.
U of G's current neuroscience minor, offered through the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, attracts students in veterinary science, biological sciences and psychology.
Referring to the Armstrongs, MacLusky says: “The recruitment of these two junior faculty adds a new dimension to the department's basic neuroscience research.”
For now, those new recruits are getting used to mingling with veterinary scientists instead of medical doctors — a different milieu for them but one they've slipped into readily. Not that they haven't noticed certain signature U of G traits that still surprise them. Carol volunteers that she hadn't encountered a poultry club or a swine club before.
“When you give a lecture, there's a place to tie up your horse,” quips John. Or his bike at any rate: he's an Ironman triathlete.
They've also brought along three sons — Jake, 8, Thomas, 4, and Luke, 2. Carol says her children provide a fascinating homegrown look at the kinds of things she studies at the lab bench. Referring to the developmental processes going on unseen as they've learned to walk, talk and become little boys, she offers in quintessential neuroscientist style: “As the axons get myelinated, it's just amazing.”
