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CSBN knows the way to your needs 

By Russ Cooper

"All of us are interested in why organisms go after the goals they go after," says Psychology Professor Barbara Woodside.

She is also Director of the Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology (CSBN) whose researchers will comprise half of the eight featured panelists at the President's Conference on April 6; a conference discussing the links between the brain and the motivation that fuels appetite, anticipation and addiction.

Professors Shimon Amir, Uri Shalev and Jane Stewart will be discussing Brain and Reward: Appetite, Anticipation, and Drug Addiction. Professor Jim Pfaus will be on the evening Self, Sexuality and Desire panel.

Those at the CSBN are researching the neuro-pathways that help facilitate desire and dependency.

"We're concerned with the mechanisms that make you choose one goal object over another goal object," she says. "The pathways in the brain that are rewarding with drugs of abuse are the same pathways that are activated when you say, 'wow, that was a really good steak. I think I could have seconds.'

“It's about understanding the choices we make. Why have the steak and not the rack of lamb?"

Woodside, a Birmingham, U.K.-native who's been at the CSBN since 1980, was recently named as one of 11 new Concordia Research Chairs (see Journal, March 5, 2009). She studies the tendencies of female rats as they lactate. Roughly a year ago, she showed that leptin (a hormone that acts in the brain to limit food intake) is ineffective when prolactin (a hormone present during pregnancy) is present – an effect that may contribute to metabolic disturbances in some people.

As for the conference, each CSBN member participating will be bringing their own unique perspective.

Amir, a Concordia Senior Research Chair holder since 2001, focuses his research on the circadian rhythm. In examining the genes inside the brain's master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus (the part of the brain that controls time-based aspects such as body temperature, hormone levels, sleeping and eating patterns), he's discovered those same genes function outside of the suprachiasmatic nucleus and have shown to control certain other behaviour. As for what behaviour in particular, that's part of his current investigations.

Shalev's current research focuses on reward obtaining-directed behaviour. His research has led him to theorize that the mechanisms failing to control drug-taking behaviour are the same involved in the loss of control on eating.

Pfaus' area of specialty is sexual function, focusing on measures of sexual desire in women and men, and how such measures are altered by different types of erotic stimuli. His research is centred around sexual desire, reward and inhibition in male and female rats. He is also interested in the effects of drugs of abuse on sexual behavior.

Stewart specializes in the motivational effects of drugs of abuse and the long-term effects of repeated exposure to opioid and stimulant drugs on brain and behaviour. A year ago, Stewart, whose academic career at Concordia has covered an impressive 45 years, was awarded the Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General.

The Center currently has 11 executive members, as well as associate members and 19 principal investigators.

"A strong point of our work at the CSBN is that we go from behaviour to mechanisms, but we don't stop there," Woodside says. "We're constantly trying to build functional connections about what's going on."