Dr. Elise F. Stanley

Canada Research Chair in Brain and Behaviour
Tier 1 - January 1, 2001
Health

Research Involves

Exploring the role of calcium in regulating nerve communication

Research Relevance

Understanding information processing in the brain which is necessary for sensation, muscle movement, memory, learning and thought

Tuning in to the Calcium Channel

Dr. Elise Stanley has a big question with an almost infinitesimally small answer. How do nerve cells communicate? It’s a basic research question that has potentially far-reaching implications for the understanding of all brain processing—from movement to emotion—and for understanding many degenerative and functional brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and movement disorders.

For the past 16 years, Elise has explored the intricate and complicated role that calcium plays in the transmission of impulses from a nerve cell to its many target cells at the often remote contact points called synapses. We can liken synapses to the brain’s transistors, for they are specialized contacts that can transmit, amplify or damp the brain’s electrical circuits. At the synapse, calcium, in its dissolved or "ionic" form, performs a role of crucial importance—it links electrical impulses in the nerve ending to the release of chemical "transmitter" substances. These transmitters act on the membranes of target cells, trigging them to fire their own impulses in turn.

In 1989 and 1991, Stanley was the first person to record the movement of calcium through a molecular pore or "calcium ion channel," into the nerve terminal. This was a most challenging task, as these nerve terminals are extraordinarily tiny, typically only 0.002 millimetres, and each calcium ion channel admits only about 150 individual calcium ions at a time. The experiment took three years to prepare, and has since opened the door to a new understanding of nerve function.

As the new Canada Research Chair in Brain and Behaviour at the University of Toronto and the Head of the Cellular and Molecular Biology Division of the Toronto Western Research Institute, UHN, Elise will continue to investigate the role that calcium ions and calcium chanels play in nerve function and brain processing. A key goal is to examine how the calcium channels themselves are modulated. Such modulation can control the quantity of transmitter released from the nerve terminal and therefore how large an influence an individual nerve terminal has on brain activity. This control mechanism likely plays a fundamental role in many complex brain processes such as learning and memory.

For further information, please contact Dr. Elise F. Stanley using the Email contact form or by phone at 416 603-5131