- Scholarship in 1997 at McGill University
More than 70% of Canadian adults experience moderate levels of stress daily. The effect of stress on the Canadian health system is enormous and escalating. Increasing evidence has pointed out that the communication between brain cells - synaptic transmission - is highly susceptible to stress insult.
Tak Pan Wong, PhD, studies the impact of stress on the brain. He also evaluates how this relates to individual behaviour, learning ability and memory formation.
One of his research interests is to understand how stress produces abnormality in synaptic transmission, and consequently, impairment in memory formation. Using a combination of electrophysiological, molecular, and proteomic approaches, he studies the molecular mechanism of how stress affects the plastic properties of glutamatergic transmission.
Another major direction of Wong’s laboratory is to study the alteration of glutamatergic transmission in brain diseases. Using animal models of Alzheimer’s disease, depression and schizophrenia, Wong’s team investigates the role of NMDA receptor, a key player of synaptic plasticity, in the formation of cognitive and psychopathological deficits of these models.