三、教研优势
1.概况
Our Research Units,Create / Update a ProfileThe Université de Montréal (including its affiliated schools) is the 3rd most active canadian university in terms of research and among the 100 largest public research universities in the world, with more than $500 million in research funding.
我们的研究单位，创建并且更新配置了蒙特利尔大学(包括其附属学校)在研究方面的设施，成为了加拿大第三的大学，也是世界上最大的100所公立研究型大学之一，拥有超过5亿美元的研究经费。
2.杰出研究成果展示
研究成果一：改变狼獾是恶性动物的误解
I want to change the misperception that wolverines are vicious animals,I do research on wolverines, those bear-like carnivores of the North with the unmerited reputation of being particularly vicious beasts. Mammals of the Mustelidae (weasels) family, they actually aren't all that dangerous to humans. They've now mostly disappeared from view; in Quebec, it's been 40 years since any were spotted in the wild. Some live in captivity, like the two kept at the Zoo sauvage of Saint-Félicien, 500 kilometres north of Montreal. I interviewed 340 people (200 adults and 140 children) there to find out what they know about the animal – very little, it turns out. Wolverines could someday be reintroduced to their natural habitat in northern Quebec, and a lot of education will be needed to change people's misperceptions and prepare them for the animals' arrival. Zoos would be the perfect place to do that. After my PhD, I want to keep doing research on wild animals.
我研究了那些像北极熊般的食肉动物例如狼獾，它的声望是一个非常恶毒的野兽。鼬科(鼬鼠)家族的哺乳动物实际上并不是对人类危险的。在魁北克，他们现在大多从视野中消失已经有40年了，只有在野外才会被发现。有些居住在囚禁的地方，就像两个人在蒙特利尔以北500公里处的圣弗雷西尼奥动物园保护区。我访问了340人(200名成年人和140名儿童)，以了解他们对动物的了解，事实证明他们对这种动物的了解很少。有一天可能将金刚石重新引入魁北克北部的自然栖息地，需要大量教育来改变人们的误解并为动物的到来作好准备。动物园将是完美的地方。
研究成果二：女士们，这就是生育率随着年龄而下降的原因
Ladies, this is why fertility declines with age,Researchers at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center (CRCHUM) have discovered a possible new explanation for female infertility. Thanks to cutting-edge microscopy techniques, they observed for the first time a specific defect in the eggs of older mice. This defect may also be found in the eggs of older women. The choreography of cell division goes awry, and causes errors in the sharing of chromosomes. These unprecedented observations are being published today in Current Biology.“We found that the microtubules that orchestrate chromosome segregation during cell division behave abnormally in older eggs. Instead of assembling a spindle in a controlled symmetrical fashion, the microtubules go in all directions. The altered movement of the microtubules apparently contributes to errors in chromosome segregation, and so represents a new explanation for age-related infertility,” stated CRCHUM researcher and University of Montreal professor Greg FitzHarris.Women – and other female mammals – are born with a fixed number of eggs, which remain dormant in the ovaries until the release of a single egg per menstrual cycle. But for women, fertility declines significantly at around the age of 35.，Centre de recherche du CHUM,“One of the main causes of female infertility is a defect in the eggs that causes them to have an abnormal number of chromosomes. These so-called aneuploid eggs become increasingly prevalent as a woman ages. This is a key reason that older women have trouble getting pregnant and having full-term pregnancies. It is also known that these defective eggs increase the risk of miscarriage and can cause Down’s syndrome in full-term babies” explained FitzHarris.Scientists previously believed that eggs are more likely to be aneuploid with age because the “glue” that keeps the chromosomes together works poorly in older eggs. This is known as the “cohesion-loss” hypothesis.“Our work doesn’t contradict that idea, but shows the existence of another problem: defects in the microtubules, which cause defective spindles and in doing so seem to contribute to a specific type of chromosome segregation error” asserted Professor FitzHarris.Microtubules are tiny cylindrical structures that organize themselves to form a spindle. This complex biological machine gathers the chromosomes together and sorts them at the time of cell division, then sends them to the opposite poles of the daughter cells in a process called chromosome segregation.“In mice, approximately 50% of the eggs of older females have a spindle with chaotic microtubule dynamics” declared FitzHarris.The researchers conducted a series of micromanipulations on the eggs of mice between the ages of 6 and 12 weeks (young) and 60-week-old mice (old). “We swapped the nuclei of the young eggs with those of the old eggs and we observed problems in the old eggs containing a young nucleus,” explained Shoma Nakagawa, a postdoctoral research fellow at the CRCHUM and at the Université de Montréal. “This shows that maternal age influences the alignment of microtubules independently of the age of the chromosomes contained in the nuclei of each egg.”Greg FitzHarris’s team notes that spindle defects are also a problem in humans. In short, the cellular machinery works less efficiently in aged eggs, but this is not caused by the age of the chromosomes.This discovery may one day lead to new fertility treatments to help women become pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term. “We are currently exploring possible treatments for eggs that might one day make it possible to reverse this problem and rejuvenate the eggs,” explained FitzHarris.Many more years of research will be needed before getting to this point. But understanding the precisely orchestrated choreography that unfolds within each egg during cell division will eventually allow us to correct the errors, to ensure the production of healthy eggs that can be fertilized.
蒙特利尔大学医院研究中心(cr密友)的研究人员发现了一种可能的新解释，解释了女性不孕的原因。由于先进的显微技术，他们第一次观察到老鼠的卵子有一个特殊的缺陷。这种缺陷也可能在老年妇女的卵子中发现。细胞分裂的编排出错导致染色体的共享错误。这些前所未有的观察结果今天发表在当代生物学上。“我们发现，在细胞分裂过程中精心安排染色体分离的微管在老年卵子中表现异常。微管不是以可控的对称方式组装一个纺锤体，而是向各个方向运动。微管运动的改变明显地导致了染色体分离的错误，这代表了一种对年龄相关的不育的新解释。”cr鸿研究员和蒙特利尔大学教授Greg FitzHarris说。女性和其他雌性哺乳动物天生就有固定数量的卵子，这些卵子在卵巢中一直处于休眠状态，直到每个月经周期释放出一个卵子。但对女性来说，35岁左右的生育率显著下降。德雷彻姆中心，“女性不孕的一个主要原因是卵子的缺陷，导致她们的染色体数目异常。”这些所谓的单倍体卵子随着年龄的增长而变得越来越普遍。这是一个重要的原因，即老年妇女在怀孕和怀孕期间都有困难。我们还知道，这些有缺陷的鸡蛋会增加流产的风险，并且会导致全学期婴儿的唐氏综合症。”菲茨哈里斯解释说。科学家以前认为卵子更有可能是由于年龄的增长而导致的，因为使染色体保持在一起的“胶水”在较老的卵子中起作用很差。这就是所谓的“内聚损失”假说。“我们的工作与这一想法并不矛盾，但却显示了另一个问题的存在:微管中的缺陷，导致有缺陷的纺锤波，这样做似乎导致了一种特定的染色体隔离错误，”菲茨哈里斯教授断言。微管是微小的圆柱形结构，组织成一个纺锤体。这个复杂的生物机器将染色体聚集在一起，在细胞分裂的时候对它们进行分类，然后将它们发送到子细胞的相反的两极，这个过程被称为染色体隔离。“在老鼠中，大约50%的老母卵子有一个纺锤体，有混乱的微管动力学，”菲茨哈里斯说。研究人员对6到12周(年轻)和60周大的老鼠(老)的卵细胞进行了一系列显微操作。“我们把年轻的卵子和旧卵子的细胞核交换了，我们观察到含有年轻细胞核的旧卵子的问题，”Shoma Nakagawa解释说，他是cr密友和世界大学的博士后研究员。“这表明，母亲的年龄影响着微管的排列，而与每个卵子的细胞核中包含的染色体的年龄无关。”格雷格菲茨哈里斯的研究小组指出，纺锤体缺陷也是人类的一个问题。简而言之，细胞机器在衰老的卵子中工作效率较低，但这并不是由染色体的年龄造成的。这一发现可能有一天会带来新的生育治疗方法，帮助妇女怀孕并怀孕。菲茨哈里斯解释说:“我们目前正在研究可能的鸡蛋处理方法，有一天可能会逆转这一问题，使鸡蛋恢复活力。”在达到这一目的之前，还需要进行许多年的研究。但是，理解细胞分裂过程中每一个卵细胞中精心编排的编排，最终将允许我们纠正错误，确保能够受精的健康卵子的生产。
研究成果三：对精神病的脆弱性:如何检测
Vulnerability to psychosis: how to detect,An international research team has demonstrated that an exaggerated emotional brain response to non-threatening information predicts emergence of clinically psychotic symptoms.A new study has identified an early vulnerability brain marker for psychosis. A research team led by University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center shows that an exaggerated emotional response from the brain to non-threatening and non-emotional cues predicts the emergence of the first signs of psychotic symptoms in late adolescence. The results of this study were published on March 21 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.These results are consistent with hypotheses about how psychosis develops. “Delusions and persecution ideas in psychosis appear as a way to make sense of a person’s tendency to attribute salience to neutral and non-salient environmental stimuli,” explained the study’s lead author, Josiane Bourque, a doctoral student at UdeM’s Department of Psychiatry.This finding could have important clinical repercussion for early identification of at-risk youth. “We were able to detect brain-related abnormalities in teens before psychotic experiences and substance misuse begin to cause significant cognitive impairment and require medical intervention,” said Patricia Conrod, senior author and professor at UdeM’s Department of Psychiatry. “It has yet to be determined whether exaggerated emotional reactivity to non-salient cues can be modified in young adolescents and whether such modifications can benefit at-risk youth,” further explained Conrod. “This issomething that we hope to investigate as a follow-up to these findings.”Brain markersDr. Conrod’s team followed more than a thousand European teenagers from age 14 to 16 who were part of the well-known IMAGEN (Imaging Genetics for Mental Disorders) cohort. They measured the teens’ brain activity during completion of various cognitive tasks to evaluate reward sensitivity, inhibitory control and the processing of emotional and non-emotional content. Moreover, the teenagers completed self-reported questionnaires on various psychiatric symptoms at ages 14 and 16. The team first selected a group of youth at 14 years of age who were already reporting occasional psychotic-like experiences and showed that they responded to non-emotional stimuli as though they had strong emotional salience. Then, using a machine learning approach, the researchers tested whether these functional brain characteristics predicted emergence of future psychotic symptoms in a larger group of adolescents at 16 years of age.Results,At the age of 16, 6% of youth reported having had auditory or visual hallucinations and delusional ideas, and these experiences were significantly predicted by psychotic-like tendencies and brain reactivity to neutral stimuli at 14 years of age, and cannabis use prior to 16 years of age.Toward new intervention strategies?,“Our research reveals that vulnerability to psychosis can be identified at an early adolescence period”. This is highly encouraging from a prevention perspective. “Since psychosis onset is typically during the beginning of adulthood, early identification of psychosis vulnerability gives clinicians a large window of time in which to intervene on risky behaviours and key etiologic processes”, said Conrod, who is also a researcher at Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center. “Our team hopes that this study helps guide the design of new intervention strategies for at-risk youth, before the symptoms become clinically relevant,” she concluded.
一个国际研究小组已经证明，对非威胁性信息的夸大的情绪反应可以预测出临床精神病症状的出现。一项新的研究已经确定了早期的精神疾病的大脑标记。由蒙特利尔大学和圣-贾斯汀大学医院研究中心领导的一个研究小组表明，大脑对非威胁性和非情绪性暗示的夸张的情感反应预示着在青春期后期出现精神病症状的第一个征兆。这项研究的结果发表在3月21日的美国精神病学杂志上。这些结果与精神病发展的假说是一致的。“在精神病中，错觉和迫害的想法似乎是一种理解人倾向于对中立和不明显的环境刺激的倾向的一种方式”。该研究的主要作者Josiane Bourque说，他是尤德姆精神病学的一名博士生。这一发现可能对早期诊断高危青少年具有重要的临床影响。“我们能够在精神患者的经历和药物滥用开始引起严重的认知障碍，并需要医疗干预的情况下，发现青少年的大脑相关异常”Patricia Conrod是我们大学的精神病学的高级作者和教授。Conrod进一步解释说:“目前还没有确定是否在年轻的青少年中被夸大的情绪反应是否能被修改，是否能对有风险的年轻人产生影响。这是我们希望对这些发现进行后续调查的结果。大脑标记，Conrod博士的团队跟踪了超过1000名从14岁到16岁的欧洲青少年，他们是著名的图像(精神疾病的成像遗传学)的一部分。他们测量了青少年在完成各种认知任务时的大脑活动，以评估奖励敏感度、抑制控制以及情绪和非情绪内容的处理。此外，这些青少年在14岁和16岁时完成了关于各种精神症状的自我报告问卷。研究小组首先选择了一组14岁的年轻人，他们已经报告了一些偶然的心理体验并表明他们对非情感刺激做出了反应，就好像他们有强烈的情感上的显著性一样。然后，通过使用机器学习方法研究人员测试了这些功能的大脑特征是否预示了16岁以上的青少年中出现的精神病症状的出现。结果：在16岁的时候6%的青少年报告说他们有听觉或视觉幻觉和妄想的想法，这些经验在14岁的时候被精神类的倾向和大脑反应性的刺激，以及16岁之前的大麻使用。对新的干预策略?我们的研究表明，在青少年时期精神病的脆弱性可以被识别出来。从预防的角度来看，这是非常鼓舞人心的。Conrod说，由于精神病发作通常是在成年期开始的，早期的精神疾病的发现给临床医生提供了一扇大的时间来干预风险行为和关键的病因过程。他也是圣-贾廷大学医院研究中心的一名研究人员。她总结说，我们的研究小组希望这项研究能够帮助指导在临床相关症状出现之前，为高危青少年制定新的干预策略。
四、校园环境(源自网络，非本网站翻译)
主校区位于蒙特利尔市，地处皇家山北麓，环境优雅，气候宜人，相比其它同等规模的北美大城市，蒙特利尔市的消费水平相对较低，尤其是房租比较低;该市为北美洲大学生密度最大的城市，也是北美洲最优雅浪漫的文化之城;此外，该市地上、地下乃至航空交通体系完善，出行便利。分校区所在地：勒奴地耶区(蒙特利尔东北)、拉瓦尔市(大蒙特利尔地区北部)、龙魁尔市(魁北克省西南部蒙泰雷吉区)、魁北克市、三河城(蒙特利尔与魁北克市之间)、圣亚森特市(魁省南部城市)。
五、杰出校友(源自网络，非本网站翻译)
加拿大前总理皮埃尔·特鲁多;
阿尔及利亚前总理艾哈迈德·本毕图尔;
联合国人权委员会高级专员路易斯·阿布尔;
诺贝尔医学奖得主R.C.L.吉尔曼;
全球最大黄金矿产Newmont创始人、总裁皮埃尔·拉森德;
著名导演、编剧丹尼斯·阿康特。