TikTok is the most popular social media platform in recent years. It is distinguished from other platforms by user-initiated challenges, dances and playback, giving it a strong potential for attraction and imitation, thus exposing users to an increased risk of encountering disturbing content. The aim of this presentation is to analyze how masculinist discourses promoting patriarchal ideologies and male cultural domination are formed, disseminated and appropriated by users on TikTok, focusing on one specific movement: #sigma. Based on a qualitative method of digital observation through “immersion” in the TikTok environment, we proceed to collect and analyze content from videos, publications, hashtags and accounts related to masculinist content. We take a socio-technical approach, whereby the promotion of masculinist discourse and hatred towards women is seen as mediated between technology and humans. While most studies focus on extremist forms of masculinism, such as incels, we focus on content that progressively shapes a toxic communication leading young audiences towards extremist discourse against women. These findings are all the more worrying given the widespread use of social networks, particularly TikTok, among teenagers, and the risks this audience faces by being exposed to “gendered misinformation” while in the midst of identity construction.

François Gillardin is currently a doctoral candidate in criminology under the supervision of Samuel Tanner at the Université de Montréal. His thesis focuses on the manufacture of information in times of crisis, and more broadly on the issues of disinformation, hate speech and propaganda online. He is also a researcher at the Observatoire internationale sur les impacts sociétaire de l'AI et du numérique (OBVIA) and the Laboratoire de recherche sur la technologie, l'activisme et la sécurité (LarTAS).

Antibiotic Resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health that can affect anyone, of any age, in any country. According to WHO, there will be 10 million deaths by 2050 because of Antibiotic Resistance. Unfortunately, Antibiotic Resistance is already tagged as a silent pandemic. My PhD project focuses on developing new antibiotics using computational tools. The project's workflow is designed by implementing computational tools like molecular docking, MD simulations and machine learning to search top candidates of small molecules antibiotics that target the bacterial RNA. 

Vrinda Nair is a doctoral candidate in physics who currently researches on drug design of small molecules by implementing computational tools and models. Her project focuses on antibiotic resistance and aims to find new computationally-informed antibiotics. Her doctoral research is funded by the NSERC, CRC, Mitacs, Digital Research Alliance of Canada and Concordia University. Vrinda also works as the outreach site coordinator for Let’s Talk Science at Concordia University. She holds a Bachelor’s and a Master of Technology in Biotechnology. She is a published poet, artist, science communicator and STEM mentor.

​Finn Creeggan is a neuroscience student at McGill University with a passion for understanding how the brain changes in disease. His research focuses on Multiple Sclerosis (MS), where he uses cutting-edge data analysis techniques, including artificial intelligence, to explore how different brain cells respond to the disease. By spotting patterns in massive cellular datasets, he hopes to pave the way for better treatments. Outside of research, Finn enjoys playing sports, pottery, sewing, and writing about design.

The learning objectives of this presentation are:

• To understand how memory and other thinking abilities changed with healthy aging

• To appreciate how various factors affect how well we can think and remember, including the major medical factors, as well as everyday lifestyle factors

• To learn about practical strategies to make our memory function better

Dr. Nicole Anderson obtained her Bachelors of Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis, and her Masters and PhD in Psychology from the University of Toronto. She is also a registered clinical neuropsychologist. Dr. Anderson’s research focuses on cognitive and neural changes associated with healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment, and interventions to promote brain health among older adults. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, and co-authored the book, Living with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Guide to Maximizing Brain Health and Reducing Risk of Dementia, the second edition of which was published in 2024. She currently holds many titles, including Senior Scientist, Interim Executive Director of Academic and Scientific Affairs, Director of the Katz Interprofessional Research Program in Geriatric and Dementia Care, and Associate Scientific Director of the Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness at the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, as well as Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. In 2024, she was a recipient of a Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada award from the Women’s Exchange Network.

Indigenous Peoples have endured a range of atrocities resulting from colonial processes, including displacement from ancestral lands and forced removal of children from their families.  Despite this, many Indigenous people were, and continue to be, remarkably resilient in the face of historical and ongoing adversity. This presentation will explore findings from a collaborative project with the Union of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq which aimed to uncover pathways to healing in Mi’kmaq communities through in-depth interviews with Knowledge Holders. The importance of engaging with community and integrating Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being will also be discussed in the context of Indigenous community health research.

​Anik Obomsawin (she/her) is a PhD student in Psychological Science at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is Abénaki and European-Canadian with ties to the Odanak First Nation. Anik completed her Master’s of Science in Biology at Dalhousie University then transitioned to Psychology to focus on research relating to Indigenous community health. Anik is currently engaging in collaborative work with groups like the Union of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq, Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, and the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging to explore social and cultural factors that promote wellness in Indigenous populations. Anik is also a proud member of the Decolonizing and Indigenizing Psychology Committee (DIPC) in the Department of Psychology.

The presentation sets out ways for you and your caregivers to navigate a life-changing diagnosis. It provides a roadmap for thinking about, talking about and managing any diagnosis – these strategies will increase your awareness and confidence, and empower anyone in this demanding situation cope better.Through this presentation audiences will learn how to:

• Stay positive yet realistic through their illness journey

• Use their values and preferences to guide health care decisions

• Understand patient rights and how to speak up

• Navigate through the complex health care system

After 40 years in private practice, psychologist Barbara has followed her interest in bereavement and grief. She has acted as a witness for those requesting MAID and is on the executive of the Toronto GTA chapter of DWDC where she works with people exploring their Advance Care Plans.

Peter Macaulay is member of the education and community outreach committee of the Toronto Chapter of Dying with Dignity.  He has been a board member at the Dorothy Ley Hospice in Etobicoke since 2014, including a three-year term as the Chair of the Board. He believes that education can have a positive impact on the quality of a person’s death, and lives of the family members they leave behind.

In a society where end-of-life care is becoming increasingly complex, this session will provide you with an overview of your end-of-life choices in Ontario today. You will learn about:

• Conventional medical care, hospice palliative care, medical assistance in dying and other end-of-life choices

• How the Advance Care Planning process underlies all of these choices

• Additional resources that will assist you making informed decisions about the choices you make

After 40 years in private practice, psychologist Barbara has followed her interest in bereavement and grief. She has acted as a witness for those requesting MAID and is on the executive of the Toronto GTA chapter of DWDC where she works with people exploring their Advance Care Plans.

It’s never too early to start thinking about your health care options, to articulate your wants and needs for a time when you are not able to speak for yourself. If something unexpected were to happen tomorrow, what care would you want to receive – or not receive? These decisions are challenging and this session will let you know how to start creating an Advance Care Plan.

Denyse Burns is the founder of Madison-Burns & Associates, a Toronto firm specializing in executive coaching, communication and Leadership consulting. She is also an End-of-Life Doula. As a volunteer with the Greater Toronto Area Chapter of Dying with Dignity Canada, Denyse’s focus is on Advance Care Planning Presentations.

Where do our political attitudes come from? Why are some people more conservative while others are more liberal? In this discussion, Luke Mungall will explore the psychology of politics in Canada and beyond. We’ll examine how psychologists understand and measure personality, and how our enduring traits shape political attitudes and behaviours. Additionally, we’ll discuss the ways in which voters’ psychological traits may be strategically leveraged in political campaigns.

Luke is a PhD student in Experimental Psychology at Dalhousie University. His research explores the personality underpinnings of political behaviour and antisocial behaviour. Recently, Luke has investigated the personality underpinnings of Canadian political partisanship, political incivility on social media, strategic voting, cyberbullying, and academic cheating. Currently, he is involved in research investigating the impact of personality-targeted political advertising, famously used during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Join us for an engaging discussion on the mental and brain health benefits of nature for adults. Dr. Daniel Almeida will explore how exposure to natural environments can enhance cognitive function, reduce stress, and improve overall emotional well-being. Highlighting recent research, he will delve into the biopsychosocial mechanisms that underlie these benefits, offering insights on how integrating nature into our lives can promote better mental health. Participants will leave with practical strategies for incorporating nature into their daily routines as an essential part of their well-being.

Dr. Daniel Almeida, Ph.D. is a Behavioural Science Fellow with Impact Canada, focusing his research on mental health, well-being, and substance abuse throughout the lifespan. Before joining the Federal Government, Daniel completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience & Epigenetics from McGill University. Based at the McGill Group for Suicide Studies, his research utilized post-mortem human brain samples and psychological autopsies to understand the long-term impacts of early life adversity on the human brain. Specifically, his work investigated the epigenetic mechanisms underlying the link between childhood abuse and suicide. Beyond his research experience, Daniel is a passionate mental health educator who demonstrates a long-standing commitment to sharing his extensive knowledge of mental health and well-being with diverse audiences.

As a field, neuroscience is inherently siloed: there are mountains of facts, but very limited integrative links between them. Yet, we keep training students as specialists within unique domains, and naively hope that they will identify links between these domains. Here, we advocate for an adjunctive, multi-party approach that explicitly shapes the skillsets of modern, integrative neuroscientists by leveraging techniques used to train students in inherently creative disciplines, such as improvisational music and freelance art. Rather than developing deep expertise in a specific subdomain, students would first be exposed to a suite of techniques and subfields, and then formally trained on the creative process. This training will allow them to recombine existing constraints in order to identify coherent, testable predictions for multi-domain hypotheses. Through a series of worked examples, we will demonstrate how recent multi-disciplinary initiatives in neuroscience – such as open data resources and code-sharing – are moving the needle in this direction, and provide a platform for open discussion on the benefits and costs of implementing this shift  in academia at large.

​Giulia is a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia. She just completed her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University, in Canada. During her graduate studies, she used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to understand why and how brain signals vary over time, from milliseconds to years, in healthy populations. In her postdoc, Giulia is now building more accurate models of how cognition and behaviour emerge from brain dynamics, leveraging theories and tools from different disciplines that deal with multi-scale complex systems, such as the brain.

As people age, their brains undergo various changes that can impact cognitive function and memory. In its most basic form, our capacity to learn (and forget) stems from the ability of our brain cells to effectively strengthen (or weaken) the way in which they communicate. However, as our brain cells age, they have a reduced range in which they can turn up (strengthen) or down (weaken) these connections. This biological strategy is useful for maintaining strong memories across a lifetime but comes at the expense of a reduced ability to learn or form new memories in older adults. In this talk I will introduce you to the current scientific understanding of how memories form in our brain and how this process diminishes with age. We will also discuss strategies currently being investigated to revitalize our brain’s capacity for learning and prevent memory loss associated with age. Spoiler alert: this strategy is going to move you.  

Dr. Jonathan Thacker is a trained neuroscientist and emerging leader at the crossroads of exercise physiology, neurophysiology and neurological disease. His research investigates the ways in which our brain cells change to become more responsive to new information, and how harnessing this understanding can improve our capacity to form memory. By leveraging these findings Dr. Thacker is developing new treatments for neurodevelopmental (autism spectrum disorders) and neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer’s dementia). His approach aims to accelerate the bench-to-bedside process by improving the effectiveness of individual treatment sessions. He currently holds a Norm Hollend SHF Research Fellowship and is the inaugural recipient of the Willis-Green Postdoctoral Fellow in Alzheimer’s research.

Older adults live with different degrees of frailty, which impacts their individual risk of experiencing poor health outcomes as they age. We understand frailty as a combination of a person’s physical and mental health and their ability to live independently. Factoring frailty into how we care for older adults, particularly those living with chronic conditions, is necessary to ensure they get personalized recommendations and care plans. This talk will discuss how we understand frailty, the impact of frailty on osteoarthritis, as an example condition, and how frailty can be improved or avoided.

Dr. Selena Maxwell is a postdoctoral researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. Originally hailing from rural Ontario, she has calls Nova Scotia her home. Her research focuses on frailty and its impact on diseases of aging, like dementia and osteoarthritis. In her spare time, you can find her hiking the coastline, gardening, or sewing her own clothes.

Sophie Simard is a PhD candidate at the Douglas Research Centre, working under the supervision of Dr Naguib Mechawar. She studies neurogenesis, a phenomenon where new neurons are generated in the brain. The existence of neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus, a brain region crucial for memory and the regulation of mood, was first discovered approximately twenty-five years ago. However, in recent years, the occurrence of neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus has been widely debated within the scientific community due to the publication of several conflicting reports. The controversy surrounding this topic highlights the need to examine the full extent of this phenomenon in the human brain to understand its involvement in hippocampal functions and related pathologies, which include mental health disorders. In this talk, she will give an overview of the phenomenon and discuss why its existence in the human brain remains a controversial area of research.

We live in a time where people have increasingly negative opinions about those who hold opposing political views to themselves. Research has shown these attitudes are quite consistent and extreme between liberals and conservatives. This talk explores individuals who don't fall neatly into one of these groups, but somewhere in between: political moderates. We show that there are still large groups of citizens whose political attitudes and feelings towards people they disagree with, are not as extreme as the liberal and conservative groups that are focused on in the news and media. We then describe progress on an intervention designed to increase cooperation between people who do strongly disagree on political topics. This talk highlights ways in which we are not as politically divided as it may seem, and how to bring individuals closer to compromise on political topics.

Jacklyn Koyama is a social psychologist who earned her PhD at the University of Toronto (UofT) studying intergroup conflict and cooperation. Her work focuses primarily on two domains: political ideological conflict and the experiences of women in male-dominated workforces in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. She integrates a variety of methods in her work, including qualitative and quantitative analysis, machine learning, as well as behavioural and psychophysiological assessment. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at UofT's Data Science Institute looking at ways of identifying stressful social situations from physiological heart-activity data using machine learning methods.

Introduction to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) Medical Assistance in Dying has been legal in Canada since 2016 and the legislation has recently been amended. Have you wondered who is eligible and what the process entails? This 30-minute presentation will provide a brief history of how MAID came into law; outline eligibility criteria as well as the application and assessment process; and describe what is next for existing legislation. A conversation with a resource person will follow; you are encouraged to send questions ahead of the presentation.

Dr. Roslyn Doctorow has more than 40 years of experience in the field of education, including classroom teacher, consultant, curriculum developer and writer, assessment developer, researcher, and speaker. She is currently working part-time as an adjunct professor for Nova Southeastern University. Roz believes strongly in the mission of Dying With Dignity Canada and works on both the outreach and education components of the GTA Chapter.

Bina Feldman has worked in the field of adult education for over 30 years.  She was the principal of her own company delivering Training & Development seminars, nationally and internationally. Bina is a retired professional trainer, consultant, performance coach and keynote speaker. She is pleased to be a part of Dying With Dignity Canada and making a contribution to educate the public about MAiD.

This pencil drawing session will focus on producing an interpretive sketch of a Japanese maple bonsai with the goal of exploring our subjective visual experiences looking at the same object. In a step-by-step tutorial, we will discuss well-known principles of illustrative art based on the biology of visual processing and attention. 

Yigu is a medical student and epilepsy research trainee at McGill with a passion for art and music. Yigu stays connected with her art as an instructor at community centers in Montreal, and practices cello during her free time.

Brain fingerprinting is a new approach that is advancing our understanding of individual differences in both brain activity and its relations to behaviour. Recent work has demonstrated that individuals can be differentiated from each other using brief recordings of brain activity. These results propose that an individual’s brain activity is characteristic to themselves like a fingerprint left by your hand; but unlike the fingerprints left by the hand, brain-fingerprints can be used to predict cognitive abilities. Yet, little is known about how brain fingerprints change with age. I demonstrate how individuals from a large cohort can be differentiated from one another regardless of their age. On the other hand, the specific brain regions most useful for differentiating individuals differ between young and older adults. Brain regions that are more useful for differentiating young adults support cognition and abstract thought, while brain regions more typical of older adult brain-fingerprints are responsible for sensory and motor functions. These regions more typical of older-adults also demonstrate the greatest structural changes with age, and are sparse in specific neurochemical systems. Taken together, this study demonstrates the importance of considering differences in the most useful brain features to differentiate individuals when studying in populations with varying demographics and cognitive abilities.

Jason is a PhD student at the IPN in Dr. Sylvain Baillet's lab. He studies individual differences in brain activity and how these differences are characteristic to people like a fingerprint. These so-called brain fingerprints are useful to understand brain-behaviour relationships and machine learning algorithms. His other research interests include consciousness, and the cognitive neuroscience of attention.

Women are more affected by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) than men, but the reasons for this phenomenon are still unknown. In this sense, it is crucial to understand resilience mechanisms that may delay cognitive impairment in women. Resilience has been at the heart of health research over the past decades to study how people achieve normal or better than expected outcomes despite exposure to healthy aging, neurodegeneration or stroke. In this sense, resilience can explain individual differences in rates of cognitive impairment and why people show different outcomes despite facing the same neurological disorders. In this seminar, I will discuss how linguistic diversity together with molecular mechanisms may be related to neuroplasticity and women’s resilience against Alzheimer’s disease.

Noelia Calvo is a Linguist and PhD in Psychology from Argentina. She is now working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Einstein lab. Dr. Calvo researches risk and reserve proxies in dementia. She is particularly interested in the role of language, ethnicity and biological sex in Alzheimer’s disease. To understand the interactive effects of different social determinants of health, Dr. Calvo uses behavioral data (quantitative and qualitative) together with neuroimaging techniques, and multivariate analysis. The ultimate goal of her research is to facilitate and promote health equity in the study and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

This talk will introduce and define intellectual humility. Results will be presented from three studies showing that intellectual humility is related to less political polarization and misinformation susceptibility. That is, intellectual humility may help people to not disparage political outgroup members, hold extreme political views, and turn to false information in times of uncertainty. In sum, intellectual humility is a compelling vehicle for understanding when, why, and how people form and hold certain beliefs over others.

Shauna is a sixth-year Ph.D. student in Emory University’s clinical psychology doctoral program. She worked with the late Dr. Scott Lilienfeld and currently work with Dr. Arber Tasimi (Morality and Development Lab). Broadly, she is interested in how personality intersects with beliefs. Specifically, she focuses on intellectual humility and its potential implications for political polarization and misinformation susceptibility. In the long-term, she hopes to understand the building blocks of irrational thinking and leverage intervention science to help people make changes in their beliefs.

This talk will be focusing on Sophia’s Master’s thesis: A systematic review that seeks to synthesize the existing literature to identify factors associated with TBI functional outcomes in adults older than 60 years. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability in the United States. Today, older adults aged 55 and older account for more than 46 million of the U.S. population; by 2050, that number is expected to grow to almost 90 million. Research indicates that older adults have poorer outcomes than their younger counterparts after TBI and that the severity of the TBI is positively associated with the severity of functional impairment. However, other factors predicting daily functional outcomes in older adults after TBI are unclear. A comprehensive understanding of these factors may assist clinicians in treating this growing population of older adults, gauging validated predictors for achieving more positive outcomes.

Sophia is an MS graduate student at Drexel University and a neuropsychology technician at Global Neurosciences Institute. Her research interests include investigating factors related to functional outcomes in older adults with traumatic brain injury. Her clinical interests include aging, neuroimaging, adult and geriatric assessment, diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease, stroke, brain injury, and other neurological conditions, as well as cognitive rehabilitation. She likes socializing with friends, trying new restaurants, doing yoga, and catching up on her favorite shows in her spare time.

This monthly event series is meant to bring together younger and older generations around topics of common interest.

For our first event, we will be talking about social isolation. We invited two speakers to talk about how social isolation impacts our brains, and how art can help us beat social isolation.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by challenges with social communication and repetitive behaviours. Children with autism are often assumed to perform worse than neurotypical children across all domains. However, emerging evidence suggests that autistic children may have enhanced auditory perception, as their brain’s respond faster to sounds in their environment. This advantage in processing sounds may translate to other skills, such as music or languages, and points towards children with autism being different, not necessarily deficient.

Shame is a self-conscious emotion that is both innate and strongly influenced by cultural and social factors. In North America, shame is frequently seen as a maladaptive, hard to regulate emotion that is best avoided. On the contrary, in China or Pakistan, for example, shame is a valued emotional experience. It is understood as a positive signal of one's moral self and as a marker for one's positionality in relationships. This talk will explore different ways of understanding shame across cultural contexts. 

Fanie is a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include: shame, cultural psychology, the decentering of Western frameworks in psychological science as well as maternal mental health.

Every day we engage in spoken conversations with family, friends, colleagues, and sometimes even strangers. Communicating with others and staying connected has benefits that go beyond the exchange of information, benefits that directly affect our well-being. However, the ability to communicate and the quality of communication changes as we age and technology is changing the ways we communicate. In my research, I have been exploring ways to enhance communication in older adults, particularly through the latest technologies. In one line of research, I focus on factors that influence effective communication between older adults and social robots, as these agents are currently being developed to provide companionship and assistance. In another line of research, I study whether we could use virtual reality to elicit and enhance conversations between persons with dementia and their family caregivers, in turn improving their connectedness and quality of life. Together, the goal of these studies is to inform the design of future technologies and contribute to promoting positive and successful communication in older adults.

Maria Bortot is a PhD student at CIMeC (University of Trento), under the supervision of Prof. Giorgio Vallortigara. In 2018 she obtained a master’s degree in Neuroscience and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation at the University of Padua with a final dissertation on the spontaneous use of absolute numerical rules in honeybees, based on the experiments conducted at the CRCA (Research Centre on Animal Cognition, University of Toulouse, France). In 2019, she obtained a research assistant position at the Animal Cognition Lab (CIMeC) to study the numerical abilities of bees. Using a behavioural perspective, she is currently investigating bees’ numerical and more general cognitive capacities. She is also studying different behavioural states, such as sleeping behaviour, investigating their possible links with bees’ learning and memory capacity.

Isabelle Arseneau-Bruneau is a doctoral researcher in Neuroscience at McGill University - Montreal Neurological Institute. She works under the supervision of Robert Zatorre and aims to better understand how playing musical instruments may help enhance our brain functions and auditory perception. Her research examines how the quality of auditory processing is modified when the sounds we perceive are generated by movements (such as when we play an instrument). Better knowledge of these mechanisms will help orient interventions in the clinic and educational environments. Her research is supported by the Fonds Québécois de Recherche en Santé (FQRS). Before her studies at McGill, Isabelle completed a Master's in Music & Human Learning at the University of Texas at Austin (2017) and worked as a research assistant at the SoundBrain (Chandrasekaran) Lab. She is also a professional musician, classically trained on the trumpet. She earned Music degrees from the Conservatoires de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec (2009), Laval University (2015), and pursued graduate studies in performance at The Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto (2009–2010).

By acknowledging the importance of biological sex (whether someone is male or female), medical research has made life-saving discoveries identifying different symptom profiles and treatment responses between men and women for conditions like heart attack and stroke. While neuroscience research still lags behind, we are learning that brain aging in women is different than in men, due in part to female-specific factors, like menopause. Lifestyle factors affecting brain aging are also influenced by biological sex, including sleep. In her talk, Nicole will summarize her recent research relating to the effects of early hormone loss on sleep, cognition, and brain structure. She will also discuss what implications this work has for brain aging, and whether interventions exist that might help women age better.

​We are featuring a lineup of Wisdom Exchange Project Volunteers who will each be giving a short 15 minute showcase of their research, with opportunities to engage with studies for a discussion and Q&A period.

We are featuring a lineup of Wisdom Exchange Project Volunteers who will each be giving a short 15 minute showcase of their research, with opportunities to engage with studies for a discussion and Q&A period.

Dr. Mehrdad Golian, MD, is a cardiologist and invasive electrophysiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He completed his medical school training, internal medicine residencies and cardiology residencies at the University of Manitoba. Subsequently, Dr. Golian completed his fellowship training in electrophysiology at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto where he was highly regarded for his clinical and EP skills, as well as caring interactions with patients and staff. He completed a Master of Science in Healthcare Quality and patient Safety at Queen's University. He is currently the Deputy Quality Officer at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the Director of the Atrial Fibrillation Clinic.

Dr. Julia Chabot is a geriatrician at St. Mary's Hospital Center. Before starting her medical studies, she was a classical singer. She was a national finalist in the Canadian Music Competition and sang as a soloist, notably with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. A few years later, she completed her medical training in geriatrics at McGill University. In 2016, she launched the MUSIC Project, which combines her two passions: music and geriatrics.She completed a master's degree in psychology, research component at the University of Montreal under the supervision of Drs Olivier Beauchet and Isabelle Peretz. In the context of her master's degree, she completed a study on the effects of music on the health of hospitalized geriatric patients.During her presentation, Dr. Chabot will present a summary of the evidence for the use of music in hospitals; especially on pain and anxiety control. She will also present the results of the study she led evaluating the effects of music on the mood of geriatric patients admitted to St. Mary's Hospital.

There has been a call to expand research on people living with dementia (PLWD) from health and social sectors to urban planning. The World Health Organization projects the number of PLWD to increase from 47 to 132 million worldwide by 2050, with 60-80% of PLWD residing within the community (as opposed to congregate living settings). For PLWD, being supported by their neighbourhoods in terms of access has many benefits: more social interaction, sense of worth, dignity, and improved physical/mental health. Being able to access your neighbourhood is a right, and for PLWD –  this makes it integral to investigate how neighbourhoods influence their mobility and access. You will learn about how the design of suburban neighbourhoods impacts the ability of people living with dementia to get around based on research done in Waterloo, Canada, and what can be done to make city planning dementia-inclusive.

Aging comes with changes in many of the ways we perceive the world, act and go through our lives. Our cognitive processes, the way we think, remember and make decisions, also tend to fluctuate as we get older. Jamie's talk will focus on specific parts of the brain, within an area called the medial temporal lobes, that supports episodic memory. Some of these brain regions get smaller as we age, but our brains are plastic enough to compensate for these structural changes. While some regions shrink, other regions can work harder to maintain our memory abilities.

In this session, we will explore how people can connect across generations. The session will be held by Floris Van Vugt, who is starting his career as a university professor, and Rhona Achtman, who is a retired physiotherapist. Both are actively practicing Authentic Relating.

We will share our thoughts, experiences and challenges, and based on these, we offer a number of interactive exercises that all are invited to participate in.

This event is a joint collaboration between the Wisdom Exchange Project and McGill University Research Centre for Studies in Aging. Sivaniya Subramaniapillai will present her doctoral research on the role of protective lifestyle and social factors in promoting healthy living and the importance of investigating individual differences, such as sex/gender, for an individualized approach to healthy living. Make sure to tune in to have a lively discussion about the important role that individual differences and our environment have in shaping our cognitive health!

Danielle D'Amico is a PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University in Psychological Science and one of the coordinators behind WEP. She will be presenting her research on the effects of stress on cognitive health, and how engaging in healthy lifestyle behaviours (like healthy eating, exercise, social engagement, sleep, and mindfulness practices) may be able to mitigate the harmful impacts of stress on the brain.