How genes and environment shape our health
Population neuroscientist Tomáš Paus studies how the interplay of genes and environment shape our brains. Working in concert with his wife and fellow scientist Dr. Zdenka Pausova, he is embarking on an ambitious project at Baycrest aimed at finding ways to help prevent or slow breakdowns in our brain and body health as we age.
Dr. Paus, who has an impressive and extensive background in this field, comes to Baycrest from the United Kingdom, where he founded the Brain and Body Centre at the University of Nottingham.
A brain-mapping expert, Dr. Paus is co-director of the new Toronto Trans-generational Brain and Body Centre at Baycrest. The Centre will recruit generations of families (children, parents and grandparents) from different ethnic groups for a large scale investigation into how our genetic traits combined with environmental factors — what we eat, how we manage stress, our level of physical activity, for example — influences whether or not we will develop health problems such as depression, addiction, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. These diseases are all associated with cognitive decline.
The findings could potentially transform the way we age by guiding the development of interventions and treatments for use earlier in the lifespan – as early as childhood – to prevent or slow breakdowns in our health later on.
Dr. Paus and Dr. Pausova will co-direct the Centre. A scientist with the Hospital for Sick Children, Dr. Pausova is leading the “body” or metabolism part of the endeavour. Her research focuses on cardiovascular disease in adolescence.
Toronto is an ideal location for large population-based research, Dr. Paus notes. “The consequences of different risks for these complex diseases, whether environmental or genetic, develop over time. To understand fully the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of disease or protection against disease we must study large numbers of at least three generations of families.”
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