Christopher Morrone, PhD

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Brain Health Imaging Centre at CAMH, a world leading mental health research hospital fully affiliated with the University of Toronto. I joined CAMH and the Yu lab in 2020 upon completing my PhD (Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto) in the laboratory of Dr. JoAnne McLaurin at the Sunnybrook Research Institute. In my PhD, I utilized combinatorial treatments, cognitive and electrophysiological measures to elucidate neuronal mechanisms underlying cognition, and regional variabilities in Alzheimer’s treatment efficacy. My work has been published in PLOS One, Brain and Translational Neurodegeneration, and I have given oral presentations of this work at ADPD and AAIC. My research goals are focused on understanding resilient and vulnerable neuronal populations in Alzheimer’s disease and how they contribute to behavioral, sleep and cognitive impairments. Specifically, I will study the electrophysiology of sleep, and its dynamic relationship with proteostasis in neurodegenerative diseases. I aim to identify early predictors of cognitive decline, neuronal mechanisms linking sleep to proteostasis, and efficacy of autophagy activation as a proof-of-concept for modulating the sleep-proteostasis interaction in proteinopathies, such as Alzheimer’s disease. From this work, I hope to improve our understanding of how lived experiences can alter memory and AD pathology and improve outcomes with lifestyle modifications.