Experiences That Matter: Discovering the connections between environment and early development at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (2011-2015)

A mounting body of evidence suggests that what we experience early in life plays an important role in our future health. New evidence has shifted the nature versus nurture debate, providing a fertile new area of inquiry. With the support of partners like The Lawson Foundation, researchers at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research are discovering important insights about the healthy development of young children.

The Foundation’s support of CIFAR President and CEO and Lawson Foundation Fellow Dr. Chaviva Hošek makes it possible for Dr. Hošek to take a leadership role in sharing our advances about the healthy development of young children with federal and provincial policy-makers as well as business and community leaders. Dr. Hošek guides the Institute’s ambitious research agenda and helps to assemble the strongest team to ensure the Institute has maximum impact in its work. She connects researchers in diverse fields and encourages them to learn each other’s disciplinary language.

Nearly three decades ago, CIFAR was founded on the belief that Canada could be a world leader in creating knowledge that expands human possibilities. Today, the Institute is one of Canada’s foremost global research assets and has an impact in areas as diverse as improving human health and the environment, transforming technology, building strong societies, understanding human culture, and charting the universe.

Since 1996, The Lawson Foundation has been an important partner of the Institute. The Foundation’s recent, transformative gift of $1 million over five years has been instrumental in supporting the Institute’s mission to create groundbreaking research and share new knowledge with leaders in government, academia, business and community organizations.

The Foundation’s gift helps CIFAR to bring together some of the world’s most brilliant researchers from around the globe to engage in a discussion of how early social experiences of living creatures mould their brains, biology and genes to set the trajectory for future health and development.

For example, CIFAR researcher Michael Kobor and his team at the University of British Columbia found that a child’s early-life socioeconomic status regulates the way genes are expressed. In his research he has found that children from poorer families more powerfully express hormonal and inflammatory responses, giving rise to chronic disease in later life. Even when their socio-economic conditions improve, children from such families are more likely to have an early onset of chronic diseases.

More recently, CIFAR neurobiologist Takao Hensch and his team at Harvard were the first in the world to determine both the timing and mechanism of the critical period for visual development in mice. These critical periods – windows of opportunity or vulnerability during young brain development – shape the brain for life. CIFAR researchers are beginning to understand the molecular mechanism behind these critical periods.

Dr. Hensch has teamed up with CIFAR researcher Janet Werker, a Canada Research Chair in psychology, to investigate the mechanism of language acquisition in babies, including critical periods of brain development before children are even born. The knowledge gained from this work may lead to treatments for a wide-array of conditions, ranging from autism to brain injury.

“What is clear from CIFAR research is that early experiences do have a profound effect on our health, well-being and success,” says Dr. Hošek. “I see the goal of the Institute’s collective work as understanding how and why the brain works this way, and what we can do to help ensure the best possible start for young children.”

Together, The Lawson Foundation and CIFAR are helping to make outcomes like this possible. For more information, please visit www.cifar.ca.