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The Neuro will hold a symposium focused on sleep in honour of Professor Barbara Jones’ illustrious career and her official retirement. The Neuro Sleep Symposium will take place on October 1, 2021. The one-day symposium will include two keynotes. One delivered by Professor Luis de Lecea (Stanford University, USA) and the second from Professor Jerry Siegel (UCLA, USA) as well as contributions from colleagues and friends of international standing.

Professor Barbara Jones has made tremendous contributions to the field of sleep research with implication both in experimental and clinical research. During her outstanding career, Professor Jones focused at understanding how the brain generates states of waking and sleep, including slow wave sleep (SWS) and paradoxical sleep (PS, or rapid eye movement sleep, REM, when dreaming occurs) using immunohistochemical and neuroanatomical techniques combined with neurophysiological recording, and optogenetics. She is a world expert in the anatomy and physiology of sleep. Amongst many important findings, Dr. Jones identified the modulatory action of cholinergic neurons on cortical activation, the influence of inhibitory GABA neurons on sleep states and the activity of hypocretins/orexins neurons as key regulators of waking and narcolepsy with cataplexy in humans and animal model.

We expect a large audience of both experimental and clinical scientists ranging from students to principal investigators from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and others at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ as well as colleagues from other Montreal universities.