Brian Christie (neuroscientist)
Brian R. Christie (born 1964) is a Professor of Medicine and
Research
Christie's early research focused on heterosynaptic plasticity in the hippocampal formation.[2] During the course of this work, he discovered that prior synaptic activity could impact the capacity for synapses to subsequently show activity-dependent forms of plasticity, a phenomenon that he originally called "priming" but that has since been termed "metaplasticity". He completed a PhD at the University of Otago in 1993.[3] His Ph.D. work generated 9 publications on synaptic plasticity with Abraham. Following the completion of his Ph.D., he became interested in how calcium entered neurons, and began a post-doctoral fellowship with Dan Johnston. In this period he showed for the first time, using calcium imaging, that different types of voltage-gated calcium channels were not distributed homogeneously throughout neuron dendrites and somata. Moreover, he was able to show that certain types of voltage-gated channels played a preferential role in long-term forms of synaptic depression, or LTD. Despite lasting only 2.5 years, this post-doctoral fellowship generated 8 publications. In 1996, Christie turned down several job offers at Canadian institutions and moved to the Salk Institute to work with T. Sejnowski. While his aspirations for becoming more involved in the computational modeling the Sejnowski lab was known for were not realized, it was during this period that met Dr.'s Henriette van Praag and Fred "Rusty"Gage and became interested in neurogenesis. Together these individuals published four influential publications on adult hippocampal neurogenesis, with Christie performing the majority of the electrophysiological recordings.
Christie's research has shown that exercise promotes adult neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus.[4][5]
This work has since progressed to show that exercise can have beneficial effects for the brains of animals that have been exposed to
Publications
His most cited peer-reviewed publications are (updated August 2021):
- van Praag, H., Schinder, AF., Christie, BR., Toni, N., Palmer, TD., Gage, FH. Functional neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus. (2002) Nature', 415 (6875), pp. 1030–1034. Cited 3300 times. HVP, AFS, BRC = Co-first authors.
- Van Praag, H., Christie, B.R., Sejnowski, T.J., Gage, F.H. Running enhances neurogenesis, learning, and long-term potentiation in mice (1999) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 96 (23), pp. 13427–13431. Cited 3409 times. HVP, BRC = Co-first authors
- Farmer, J., Zhao, X., Van Praag, H., Wodtke, K., Gage, F.H., Christie, B.R. Effects of voluntary exercise on synaptic plasticity and gene expression in the dentate gyrus of adult male sprague-dawley rats in vivo (2004) Neuroscience, 124 (1), pp. 71–79. Cited 974 times.
- AK Olson, BD Eadie, C Ernst, BR Christie. Environmental enrichment and voluntary exercise massively increase neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus via dissociable pathways. (2006) Hippocampus 18(3):250-260. Cited 653 times.
- Johnston, D., Magee, J.C., Colbert, C.M., Christie, B.R. Active properties of neuronal dendrites (1996) Annual Review of Neuroscience, 19, pp. 165–186. Cited 644 times.
- BD Eadie, VA Redila, BR Christie.Voluntary exercise alters the cytoarchitecture of the adult dentate gyrus by increasing cellular proliferation, dendritic complexity, and spine density. Journal of Comparative Neurology 486 (1), 39-47. Cited 506 times.
- Seamans, J.K., Durstewitz, D., Christie, B.R., Stevens, C.F., Sejnowski, T.J. Dopamine D1/D5 receptor modulation of excitatory synaptic inputs to layer V prefrontal cortex neurons (2001) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98 (1), pp. 301–306. Cited 445 times.
The h-index for his work is 61, that is, 61 articles cited 61 times or more.[6]
References
- ^ a b "Island Medical Program profile". University of Victoria. Archived from the original on August 1, 2009. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ "NMDA-dependent heterosynaptic long-term depression in the dentate gyrus of anaesthetized rats." Synapse (1992) 10(10):1-6
- hdl:10523/12354.
- ^ "A Brain Besieged" The San Diego Union - Tribune - San Diego, Calif. by Scott LaFee Nov 17, 1999 abstract
- ^ "Keeping fit can mean huge benefits for your brain: Neuron growth. by Katherine Dedyna, Canwest News Service, Monday, Feb. 2, 2009 National Post[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Brian Christie - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.ca.