Surjeet Singh (PhD candidate)

Surjeet Singh is a PhD candidate for the Department of Neuroscience in the University of Lethbridge. He studies cortico-cortical and hippocampal-cortical interactions in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to look at how AD impacts circuits in our brain and subsequent information processing. More specifically, he is interested in understanding how age, genetic variance and other disease factors such as vascular risk factors can impact these interactions in AD.

The top panel (A) shows histology slides of a healthy and a diseased brain. The green colour represents amyloid plaques deposits which is the classical hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the brain. The lower panel (B) shows an approach to study the ongoing electrical activity in the brain using in-vivo widefield optical imaging techniques combined with electrophysiological recordings. In layman terms it’s like “a window to the brain”

What is your research about?

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition associated with aggregation of two major proteins, amyloid beta and microtubule-associated protein, tau. Limited effective long-term pharmacologic therapy for prevention and treatment of AD suggests a lack of our understanding of the pathophysiology of this disease. To understand how AD impacts circuits in our brain and subsequent information processing I use in-vivo widefield optical imaging techniques combined with electrophysiological recordings, to study cortico-cortical and hippocampal-cortical interactions in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. More specifically I am interested in understanding how age, genetic variance and other disease factors such as vascular risk factors can impact these interactions in AD.

What made you go into industry or academia? How did you get involved with your current research?

I was trained as an engineer in India and had a strong interest in mathematical framework of digital signal processing and its application. My career took multiple turns in the past few years. I started working as Assistant Professor in an engineering school for few years and later worked with the Govt. of Punjab, India in public administration where my role was to incorporate reforms and accountability in the administrative structure at all levels. However, during this period I was also actively engaged in academic research focusing mainly on channel fading and interference in wireless communication systems.

In late 2015, I was approached by a graduate student in Dr. Rajat Sandhir’s Lab at Panjab University, India to collaborate on a project. It was during the thought provoking discussions with Dr. Sandhir and the students in his Lab, I observed that in the current approach to studying the brain, no matter how much we learn and know about the parts that make it up at any scale, will by itself never provide an understanding of the dynamics of brain function, which necessarily requires a quantitative, i.e., mathematical and physical, context. The famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once wrote that “people who wish to analyze nature without using mathematics must settle for a reduced understanding.” Nowhere is this more true than in attempting to understand the brain given its amazing complexity. This got me motivated and I decided to come back to academia.

So, in fall 2016, I joined the labs of Drs. Robert J. Sutherland and Majid H. Mohajerani at CCBN, University of Lethbridge. Here, combining my diverse skills and interests, I am studying system level dysfunctions in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Specifically, how amyloid beta deposition impacts corticocortical and hippocampal-cortical interactions in normal aging and AD.

What excites you about your work?

The collaborative environment at CCBN has provided me an excellent platform to work on diverse set of projects. Every day is a new learning experience for me, having an engineering background and trying to study pathology, physiology, and behaviour from rodents to humans, makes it even more exciting. Now when I look at the ongoing activity in the brain and see how different networks in the brain interact, it always reminds me of the wireless networks I used to study few years ago; and the mathematical similarity between these two networks fascinates me. Overall, when I think about the implications of my research in rescuing the memory and cognition of those suffering with AD gets me motivated.

What are the impacts of your work?

Understanding the impact of vascular risk factors, age, and genetic variation on different brain networks in AD will provide us a novel mechanistic insight of disease progression and network dysfunctions. These outcomes are critical for prioritizing new drug targets and strategies for AD treatments and establish the predictive validity of functional connectivity as a biomarker for AD pathology.

In addition to above mentioned projects I have developed tools and techniques to study rodent and human behaviour, that not only lead to publications but also new commercial ventures and patents. Our recent start-up has been awarded a seed grant by Campus Alberta Neuroscience for developing novel tools to study motor deficits and recovery in various neurodegenerative diseases and injury.

What is a fun fact about yourself?

I love dancing, my favourite dance from is a traditional folk dance from Punjab “Bhangra”. My Canadian and international friends have associated this dance with a famous track by Punjabi MC – Beware of the Boys (a.k.a. Mundian to Bach Ke).