This Month's Staff Profiles
Each month the Centre for Brain and Behaviour profiles two staff members. This month we are profiling Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou and Dr. Margot Taylor.
Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou
Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou recently joined Bloorview Kids Rehab as a clinician-scientist. Dr. Anagnostou comes to Toronto from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where she was Assistant Professor and Clinical Director of the Seaver Autism Center of Excellence. Dr. Anagnostou’s primary appointment is in the Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Paediatrics, University of Toronto and she is located at Bloorview Kids Rehab, with a cross-appointment to the Division of Neurology, Department of Paediatics, University of Toronto at SickKids. Dr. Anagnostou completed medical school at McGill University in 1998 and her residency in child neurology in 2003. She subsequently completed a research fellowship at the Seaver Autism Center of Excellence in New York. Dr. Anagnostou’s research focuses on the psychopharmacology and neuroimaging of autism. Dr. Anagnostou is a co-principal investigator of the Clinical Trials Network funded by Autism Speaks. She also co-edited the Manual for the Treatment of Autism published by APPI Press in 2007. Her research at Bloorview Kids Rehab will focus on the development of clinical trials to test novel compounds for the treatment of autism and related disorders. In collaboration with imaging researchers at SickKids, she plans to study the developmental trajectory of abnormalities in the frontostriatal circuitry in autism, and explore the mechanisms of treatment response and side effects generation using fMRI, MR spectroscopy and DTI techniques.
Recent Publications
King BH, Hollander E, Sikich L, McCracken JT, Scahill L, Bregman JD, Donnelly CL, Anagnostou E, Dukes K, Sullivan L, Hirtz D, Wagner A, Ritz L, STAART Psychopharmacology Network: Lack of efficacy of citalopram in children with autism spectrum disorders and high levels of repetitive behavior: Citalopram ineffective in children with autism. Archives of General Psychiatry 2009: 66(6): pp 583-590.
Glessner JT, Wang K, Cai G, Korvatska O, Kim CE, Wood S, Zhang H, Estes A, Brune CW, Bradfield JP, Imielinski M, Frackelton EC, Reichert J, Crawford EL, Munson J, Sleiman PM, Chiavacci R, Annaiah K, Thomas K, Hou C, Glaberson W, FloryJ, Otieno F, Garris M, Soorya L, Klei L, Piven J, Meyer KJ, Anagnostou E, Sakurai T, Game RM, Rudd DS, Zurawiecki D, McDougle CJ, Davis LK, Miller J, Posey DJ, Michaels S, Kolevzon A, Silverman JM, Bernier R, Levy SE, Schultz RT, Dawson G, Owley T, McMahon WM, Wassink TH, Sweeney JA, Nurnberger JI, Coon H, Sutcliffe JS, Minshew NJ, Grant SF, Bucan M, Cook EH, Buxbaum JD, Devlin B, Schellenberg GD, Hakonarson H: Autism genome-wide copy number variation reveals ubiquitin and neuronal genes. Nature 2009: May 28: 459(7246): pp 569-573.
Cai G, Edelmann L, Goldsmith JE, Cohen N, Nakamine A, Reichert JG, Hoffman EJ, Zurawiecki DM, Silverman JM, Hollander E, Soorya L, Anagnostou E, Betancur C, Buxbaum JD: Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification for genetic screening in autism spectrum disorders: Efficient identification of known microduplications and identification of a novel microduplication in ASMT. BMC Medical Genomics 2008: Oct 16: 1: pp 50.
Wasserman S, Iyengar R, Chaplin WF, Watner D, Waldoks SE, Anagnostou E, Soorya L, Hollander E: Levetiracetam versus placebo in childhood and adolescent autism: A double-blind placebo-controlled study. International Clinical Psychopharmacology 2006: Nov 21(6): pp 363-367.
Hollander E, Bartz J, Chaplin W, Phillips A, Sumner J, Soorya L, Anagnostou E, Wasserman S: Oxytocin increases retention of social cognition in autism. Biological Psychiatry 2007: Feb 15 61(4): pp 498-503.
Anagnostou E, Esposito K, Soorya L, Chaplin W, Wasserman S, Hollander E: Divalproex versus placebo for the prevention of irritability associated with fluoxetine treatment in autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 2006: Aug 26(4): pp 444-446.
Hollander E, Soorya L, Wasserman S, Esposito K, Chaplin W, Anagnostou E: Divalproex sodium vs. placebo in the treatment of repetitive behaviours in autism spectrum disorder. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology 2006: Apr 9(2): pp 209-213.
Anagnostou E, Miller SP, Guiot MC, Karpati G, Simard L, Dilenge ME, Shevell MI: Type I spinal muscular atrophy can mimic sensory-motor axonal neuropathy. Journal of Child Neurology 2005: Feb 20(2): pp 147-150.
Hollander E, Anagnostou E, Chaplin W, Esposito K, Haznedar MM, Licalzi E, Wasserman S, Soorya L, Buchsbaum M: Striatal volume on magnetic resonance imaging and repetitive behaviors in autism. Biological Psychiatry 2005: Aug 158(3): pp 226-232.
Margot J. Taylor, PhD
Dr. Margot Taylor received her BA and MA from Simon Fraser University and her PhD from McGill. After a one-year post-doctoral fellowship in neurology at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, she came to SickKids in Neurology as Director of Evoked Potential Labs. In this position, she established a wide range of clinical and research applications of evoked and event-related potentials (ERPs) in paediatrics. She moved to Toulouse, France in 1998 as Directeur de Recherche, CNRS, where her research focussed on ERP measures of the development of face processing. Dr. Taylor was recruited back to SickKids in Diagnostic Imaging in the fall of 2004, as Director of Functional Neuroimaging. She is also a senior scientist in the Neurosciences & Mental Health Programme.
Dr. Taylor’s research centres on the use of fMRI and MEG to understand the neural bases of cognitive development. Areas of study include development of early stages of face processing and recognition (+/-emotional expressions), frontal lobe functions using various protocols adapted for children. Currently funded investigations from CIHR, CHRP and NSERC include normative developmental series and clinical populations.
Ongoing Projects
Investigation of frontal lobe functions in children. This work, with colleagues Drs. Elizabeth Pang and Dr. Elizabeth Donner, uses child-friendly cognitive tasks developed by the team, that run in the MRI and MEG scanners – thus assessing structural and functional brain correlates with performance on high-level cognitive skills (set-shifting, inhibition, emotional face processing, working memory). This large study includes typically developing school-aged children from 6-18 years of age, children born preterm (7-12yrs of age) and children with autism spectrum disorders (7-12yrs and 14-18yrs of age). The clinical groups have distinct profiles of frontal lobe dysfunction. The research will determine the neural bases, as well as temporal and spatial properties of brain activation patterns, of these cognitive abilities and how they emerge with typical and atypical development.
Multimodal neuroimaging and assessment of the preterm brain – longitudinal studies. This is a multidisciplinary study including neonatology, neuroimaging, neuroradiology, neurology and physicists (PIs: Drs. Taylor, Whyte, Moore, Shroff, Raybaud, Donner and Sled). We are completing a range of structural (MRI, DTI, MTR) and functional studies (fMRI, MRS) in a large series of infants born very preterm (<32 weeks gestational age), completing MRI studies within the first weeks after birth, at term age and at 2 and 4 years of age. At the latter two time-points extensive neurodevelopmental (2yrs) and neuropsychological (4yrs) assessments will also be completed to correlate the brain imaging findings with cognitive outcome.
Another preterm study (with colleagues Drs. Sled, McNamara & Whyte) with infants who have patency of the ductus arteriosus (PDA), will examine the effect of PDA ligations on MRI based perfusion and brain activation measurements. In these preterm infants, the brain imaging will allow us to answer essential questions, such as the extent of cerebral hypoperfusion and the effect of PDA ligation on cerebral perfusion and function.
Developmental investigation of memory capacity using functional neuroimaging This project (with colleagues Drs. Mary Lou Smith and Marie Arsalidou) will determine in detail the frontal brain areas and neural networks required for attaining age-appropriate capacity in verbal and visuospatial working memory paradigms. We will use fMRI to identify which brain regions mediate cognitive performance across childhood. Comparisons of the verbal and visuospatial tasks will allow us to determine the brain regions involved in each of these tasks and when during childhood they come ‘on-line’.
Recent Publications
Bayle DJ, Taylor MJ: Attention modulation and inhibition of early cortical activation to expressive faces: Distinguishing emotion and identity networks. Submitted.
Evans JW, Todd RM, Strother SC, Taylor MJ: Comparison of individual variability in fMRI responses in fusiform and primary visual cortex in adults and young children. Submitted.
Taylor MJ, Pang EW: Using MEG to image cognition in children. Down Syndrome Quarterly, in press, 2009.
Taylor MJ, Arsalidou M, Bayless SJ, Morris D, Evans JW, Barbeau EJ: Neural correlates of personally familiar faces. Human Brain Mapping, 2009, in press, epub Aug. 22nd, 2008.
Taylor MJ, Mills T, Smith ML, Pang EW: Face processing in adolescents with and without epilepsy. International Journal of Psychophysiology 2008: 68: pp 94-103.
Barbeau EJ, Taylor MJ, Regis J, Marquis P, Chauvel P, Liégeois-Chauvel C: Spatio-temporal dynamics of face recognition. Cerebral Cortex 2008: 18(5): pp 997-1009.
Bentin S, Taylor MJ, Rousselet GA, Itier,RJ, Caldara R, Schyns PG, Jacques C, Rossion B: Controlling interstimulus perceptual variance does not abolish N170 face sensitivity. Nature Neuroscience 2007: 10(7): pp 801-802.
Itier RJ, Herdman AT, George N, Cheyne DO, Taylor MJ: Inversion and contrast-reversal effects on face encoding and recognition assessed by MEG. Brain Research, 2006, 1115: pp 108-120.