Feeling welcomed: Creating space for Indigenous voices in brain and mental health research

Join us for the 2023 Brain Awareness Week Annual Neuroethics Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Melissa L. Perreault!

 

Tuesday, March 14, 2023
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM PDT
Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
639 Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC, V6C 2G3 (map)

Everyone is welcome! This public in-person event is free, but tickets are required.
Kindly RSVP here: https://ncbaw2023.eventbrite.ca 

Overview
Research on Indigenous communities has historically been conducted using a one-sided approach, with researchers having little knowledge of Indigenous culture, minimal concerns surrounding community needs or desires, and without giving back to the community. In this lecture intended for people from all backgrounds and professions, Dr. Melissa L. Perreault will discuss how this is the time to give Indigenous communities a voice in research on brain and mental health that is guided ethically and culturally.

Melissa L. Perreault, PhD
Dr. Melissa L. Perreault, PhD, is an Associate Professor and neuroscientist in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Guelph and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Perreault’s research is focused on the understanding of sex differences in the mechanisms that underly neuropsychiatric disorders, and on the identification of brain wave patterns that can be used as biomarkers to identify brain and mental health disorders.

Dr. Perreault is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, descended from the historic Métis Community of the Mattawa/Ottawa River. She has developed numerous Indigenous and equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives at institutional, national, and international levels. As a member of the Indigenous Knowledge Holders Group for the Canadian Brain Research Strategy, she continues to strive towards inclusivity in neuroscience and Indigenous community research.

Brain Awareness Week
Brain Awareness Week is the global campaign to foster public enthusiasm and support for brain science. Every March, partners host imaginative activities in their communities that share the wonders of the brain and the impact brain science has on our everyday lives.

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Seizing Hope: High Tech Journeys in Pediatric Epilepsy

Please join us for the world premiere of Seizing Hope: High Tech Journeys in Pediatric Epilepsy!

5:00 PM – 6:15 PM PDT
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
VIFF Centre, 1181 Seymour St., Vancouver, BC V6B 3M7
RSVP to the event here: https://seizinghopefilmvan.eventbrite.ca

Can new technology bring hope to children who have drug-resistant epilepsy?

More than 500,000 children in Canada and the USA have epilepsy. About a third of those children continue to have seizures despite taking anti-seizure medications, also known as pediatric drug resistant epilepsy (DRE). Surgery may be one option for them, but what if there is another option that is less invasive or more effective? What if new technology can bring hope to children who have DRE?

EVENT TIMELINE
4:15PM Doors open
5:00PM Screening starts
5:45PM Panel and Audience Q&A
6:15PM Public event ends

MODERATOR:
Judy Illes, CM, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS
Professor and UBC Distinguished Scholar in Neuroethics
Director, Neuroethics Canada
University of British Columbia

PANELISTS:
Patrick J. McDonald MD, MHSc, FRCSC
Associate Professor and Head, Section of Neurosurgery
Section Head, Neurosurgery, Shared Health Manitoba
Department of Surgery
University of Manitoba

Johann Roduit, PhD
Science Communicator, Producer, and Founding Partner of Conexkt

Please note that seating is general admission and is first-come, first-served. Tickets obtained through registration at Eventbrite do not guarantee guests a seat at the theatre. Theatre is overbooked to ensure a full house.

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ABOUT SEIZING HOPE
Families with children suffering from pediatric drug resistant epilepsy (DRE) face complex realities. In a world guided by the promises of technology, the goal of Seizing Hope is to raise awareness about the options offered by different technologies specifically for the brain in complement or as an alternative to treatment with medication. As the directors and producers of this mini-documentary, we want to empower and improve decision-making by exploring values and priorities through the lens of the families and doctors who care for them. We compiled the stories of four families with children who have pediatric DRE to shed light on their hope, trust, and empowerment journey.

The views and research presented in this documentary represent a multi-year neuroethics project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health of the USA National Institutes of Health, BRAIN Initiative.

CREDITS
Neuroethics Canada UBC, with funding from the NIH/NIMH BRAIN Initiative (#RF1MH117805-01) in association with Conexkt Innovation Studio And Cassiar Film CO. present Seizing Hope.
Featuring the Bagg, Chartrand, Thompson, and Cowin families.
Executive Producers Dr. Judy Illes and Dr. Patrick J. McDonald.
Produced by Dr. Johann Roduit. Directed by Adam Wormald.

Learn more at https://www.seizinghopefilm.com/

Brain wellness, genomic justice, and Indigenous communities: Supporting wellness and self-determination

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS

Thursday, June 9, 2022
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM PDT
Please register here for the Zoom details: https://ccbwic.eventbrite.ca

Join us for a conversation about supporting Indigenous peoples’ wellness and self-determination in the areas of genomics and brain wellness. Hear perspectives from Krystal Tsosie, co-founder of the first U.S. Indigenous-led biobank, and from members of a working group that convened this past fall to explore the meanings of brain wellness in an Indigenous health context. Our conversation will span topics including research and data sovereignty, intersections between genomic ethics and neuroethics, and uplifting community voices and perspectives. Come ready to learn and consider how our positionalities, lived experiences and cultures can impact the way we think and reason about ethics.

Panelists:
Krystal Tsosie, MPH, MA
Navajo Nation
PhD candidate, Genomics and Health Disparities
Vanderbilt University

Bryce Mercredi
Métis Nation
Elder

Cornelia (Nel) Wieman, MD, MSc, FRCPC
Anishinaabe (Little Grand Rapids First Nation)
Deputy Chief Medical Officer, First Nations Health Authority

Malcolm King, PhD, FCAHS
Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation
Professor, Community Health and Epidemiology
College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan

Sekani Dakelth
Nak’azdli Nation
Community member and activist

Moderated by:
Louise Harding, BSc
MSc Student, School of Population and Public Health
Neuroethics Canada, University of British Columbia

We are grateful to the UBC W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics for providing funding for this event.

What’s new in spinal cord repair?

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS

Tuesday, June 7, 2022
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM PDT
Please register here for the Zoom details: www.ccmtg.eventbrite.ca

Come join us for an interactive conversation with experts to discuss the latest in different approaches to spinal cord repair!

PANELISTS:
Andrea Townson, MD, FRCPC
Medical Co-Chair, Regional Rehab Program, VCHA
Clinical Professor
Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia

John Madden, PhD, PEng
Director, Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory
Professor
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia

Karim Fouad, PhD
Co-Director and Editor, Open Data Commons-SCI
Professor and Canada Research Chair for Spinal Cord Injury
Department of Physical Therapy and Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute, University of Alberta

MODERATED BY:
Judy Illes, CM, PhD
Director, Neuroethics Canada
Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, UBC Distinguished Professor in Neuroethics
Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia

Worlds Apart – Ensuring Equitable Access to Advances in Brain Health

Join us for the 2022 Brain Awareness Week Annual Neuroethics Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Patrick McDonald!

 

Tuesday, March 15, 2022
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM PDT
For the Zoom details, kindly RSVP here: https://ncbaw2022.eventbrite.ca

Overview
Rapid technological advancements have led to the potential for significant improvements in brain health, expanding both the range of conditions treated and number of patients who can be helped. While these advancements hold great promise, they also come with considerable cost and a risk that they are not offered to all who may benefit from them, especially those in vulnerable populations. Advances in treating children with epilepsy and adults with movement disorders make equitable access to all ever more critical.

Patrick McDonald MD, MHSc, FRCSC
Dr. Patrick McDonald is a pediatric neurosurgeon at Winnipeg Children’s Hospital, Head of the Section of Neurosurgery at the University of Manitoba and a Faculty Member at Neuroethics Canada in Vancouver, BC. He is Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and Past President of the Canadian Neurosurgical Society. For twenty years he has combined a practice caring for children with neurologic illness with an interest in the ethical issues that surround that care. Collaborating with Professor Judy Illes, Director of Neuroethics Canada, he studies the neuroethical issues inherent in the adoption of novel neurotechnologies to treat brain illness.

Brain Awareness Week
Brain Awareness Week is the global campaign to foster public enthusiasm and support for brain science. Every March, partners host imaginative activities in their communities that share the wonders of the brain and the impact brain science has on our everyday lives.

Community Conversations: The Ethics of Medical Cannabis for Children in an Unregulated World

Wednesday, June 23, 2021
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PDT
Register here for the Zoom details: https://emccuw.eventbrite.ca

Join us for an interactive conversation with experts on the topic of ethics and medical cannabis for children and youth in health care. The dialogue will take place both through live engagement with the public and pre-submitted questions.

We want to hear your views!

Moderators:
Hal Siden, MD, MHSc
Medical Director, Division Head and Investigator,
BC Children’s Hospital
Canuck Place Children’s Hospice
Clinical Professor, University of British Columbia

Judy Illes, CM, PhD
Director, Neuroethics Canada
Professor of Neurology, University of British Columbia

If you have a question for the moderators, you may submit it to info.neuroethics@ubc.ca prior to the event.

A Two-Component Ethics Approach for Triage to Epilepsy Monitoring Units

Jason Randhawa, MD
Neuroethics Canada Blog

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Electroencephalographic (EEG) monitoring provides critical diagnostic and management information about patients with epilepsy and seizure mimics. Admission to an epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) is the gold standard for such monitoring in major medical facilities worldwide. In many countries, however, access is challenged by limited resources compared to need. Triaging EMU admission in these circumstances is generally approached by unwritten protocols that vary by institution. In the absence of explicit guidance, decisions can be ethically taxing and are easy to dispute.

Drawing upon the limited triage literature from neurology and then moreso from various areas of medicine more broadly, my mentors and I developed an ethically-grounded two-component approach to EMU triage (Randhawa et al., under revision, 2021). The strategic component identifies three targets to guide improvements in EMU wait list infrastructure at the institutional level: (1) accountability to patients and public to foster transparency, (2) engagement of clinicians and administrators to achieve process improvements, and (3) empowerment of waitlist managers to promote active waitlist management strategies (see Figure).

The principled component applies an essential balance of three key moral philosophies to triage at the patient level. First, prioritarianism promotes the needs of the most ill, defined by seizure frequency and severity; however, it may also include subjective measures such as suffering. Second, utilitarianism maximizes the overall utility of resources, promoting the greatest benefits for the most people. If patients are having frequent seizures, they are more likely to benefit from EMU evaluation (utility) and are considered sicker (priority); therefore, these first two ethics principles work together. The principle of justice promotes equality by considering other relevant contextual factors such as patient’s ability to self-advocate and length of wait. This principle provides further refinement to the triage process. For example, patients who are disabled by frequent seizures may be unable to advocate for themselves to obtain a sooner admission despite the high utility and priority. As such, justice provides further impetus for accelerated admission.

These principles will be weighted differently depending on several contextual factors, such as the availability of adequate resources: high-resource settings favor prioritarianism; low-resource settings favor utilitarianism. Other factors affecting the use of these principles include patient and public values, clinician preferences, and objective metrics available to guide these decisions.

The approach we propose can inform site-specific process improvements and further revisions based on data generated at individual institutions. While much work remains to be done to explore and test implementation of the model, it provides a starting point in transforming implicit thinking about ethically-fraught circumstances related to EMUs into explicitly principled ones.

Acknowledgements to my research mentors Drs. Chantelle Hrazdil, Patrick McDonald, and Judy Illes for their substantial contributions. This work was supported in part by the UBC Faculty of Medicine, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, and NIH/NIMH #RF1#MH117805 01.

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Jason Randhawa, MD, is a Neurology Resident Research Assistant at Neuroethics Canada. He is a senior neurology resident based out of Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital at the University of British Columbia.

Hacking the mind: How technology is changing the way we view our brain and ourselves

Dr. Nir Lipsman (Assistant Professor, Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto) presented “Hacking the mind: How technology is changing the way we view our brain and ourselves” at the 2021 Brain Awareness Week – Annual Distinguished Neuroethics Lecture, held on March 16, 2021.

Overview:
As it advances, our relationship with brain technology will change. In this lecture, Dr. Nir Lipsman will discuss how our knowledge of brain circuitry, and how it can go wrong, has informed our understanding of human behaviour. We will then discuss the implications of more sophisticated, precise and less intrusive brain technology, on that relationship, and what it could all mean for the next generation of brain therapy and beyond…

Bio:
Nir Lipsman MD, PhD, FRCSC, is a neurosurgeon and scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto followed by a medical degree at Queen’s University, and a neurosurgical residency at the University of Toronto. During his residency, Dr. Lipsman completed his PhD investigating novel neuromodulation strategies in patients with treatment-resistant psychiatric and neurologic conditions. He is currently the Director of Sunnybrook’s Harquail Center for Neuromodulation, and the Clinical Director of Sunnybrook’s Focused Ultrasound Centre of Excellence.

Dr. Lipsman has helped develop several clinical trials of MR-guided focused ultrasound (FUS) in novel indications, including among the world’s first experience of FUS in essential tremor, obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depression and chronic pain, as well as the first randomized control trial of FUS in tremor. He has led the world’s first application of FUS-mediated blood brain barrier (BBB) opening in Alzheimer’s Disease, and helped develop the first applications in primary and secondary brain tumors and ALS. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, including in The Lancet, Lancet Neurology, Lancet Psychiatry, New England Journal of Medicine, and Neuron.

Dr. Lipsman also has a strong interest in the broader clinical and ethical implications of neuromodulation, and has been closely involved in the development of international guidelines for the use of surgery in psychiatric disease. In collaboration with Drs. Judy Illes and Pat McDonald at UBC, he helped found the Pan Canadian Neurotechnology Ethics Consortium (PCNEC), bringing together experts in neuromodulation and ethics, to identify and tackle the most pressing ethical questions in the field.

Why neurosurgeons should care about ethics and why ethicists should care about neurosurgery

At the most recent Neuroethics Canada Seminar Series, Dr. Nir Lipsman discussed why neurosurgeons should care about ethics and why ethicists should care about neurosurgery.

Bio:
Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD, FRCSC is a neurosurgeon and scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto followed by a medical degree at Queen’s University, and a neurosurgical residency at the University of Toronto. During his residency, Dr. Lipsman completed his PhD investigating novel neuromodulation strategies in patients with treatment-resistant psychiatric and neurologic conditions. He is currently the Director of Sunnybrook’s Harquail Center for Neuromodulation, and the Clinical Director of Sunnybrook’s Focused Ultrasound Centre of Excellence.

2021 Brain Awareness Week Annual Distinguished Neuroethics Lecture

Hacking the Mind: How Technology Is Changing The Way We View Our Brain and Ourselves
Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD, FRCSC, Assistant Professor, Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto

Tuesday, March 16, 2021
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PDT
For the Zoom details, please RSVP here: https://baw2021.eventbrite.ca

Overview:
As it advances, our relationship with brain technology will change. In this lecture, Dr. Nir Lipsman will discuss how our knowledge of brain circuitry, and how it can go wrong, has informed our understanding of human behaviour. We will then discuss the implications of more sophisticated, precise and less intrusive brain technology, on that relationship, and what it could all mean for the next generation of brain therapy and beyond…

Nir Lipsman MD, PhD, FRCSC
Dr. Nir Lipsman is a neurosurgeon and scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto followed by a medical degree at Queen’s University, and a neurosurgical residency at the University of Toronto. During his residency, Dr. Lipsman completed his PhD investigating novel neuromodulation strategies in patients with treatment-resistant psychiatric and neurologic conditions. He is currently the Director of Sunnybrook’s Harquail Center for Neuromodulation, and the Clinical Director of Sunnybrook’s Focused Ultrasound Centre of Excellence.

Dr. Lipsman has helped develop several clinical trials of MR-guided focused ultrasound (FUS) in novel indications, including among the world’s first experience of FUS in essential tremor, obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depression and chronic pain, as well as the first randomized control trial of FUS in tremor. He has led the world’s first application of FUS-mediated blood brain barrier (BBB) opening in Alzheimer’s Disease, and helped develop the first applications in primary and secondary brain tumors and ALS. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, including in The Lancet, Lancet Neurology, Lancet Psychiatry, New England Journal of Medicine, and Neuron.

Dr. Lipsman also has a strong interest in the broader clinical and ethical implications of neuromodulation, and has been closely involved in the development of international guidelines for the use of surgery in psychiatric disease. In collaboration with Drs. Judy Illes and Pat McDonald at UBC, he helped found the Pan Canadian Neurotechnology Ethics Consortium (PCNEC), bringing together experts in neuromodulation and ethics, to identify and tackle the most pressing ethical questions in the field.