Claudia Belliveau

McGill University

“Investigating the Long-Term Effects of Child Abuse on the Human Brain”

Stratas is proud to announce Claudia Belliveau as the winner of the Brett Wiederhold Realty Scholarship, valued at $2,000. This scholarship is made possible due to the generous financial support of Brett Wiederhold, a Toronto real estate agent and sales representative at Royal LePage. 

Claudia is a doctoral candidate at the Douglas Hospital Research Center at McGill University. Claudia’s research focus is part of a burgeoning literature on the causes of the neurological causes of depression and suicide, with particular respect to one's history of child abuse and adverse childhood events. Her research hypothesizes that childhood abuse is associated with the formation of lattice-like perineuronal nets on brain areas involved in the regulation of mood and emotions. More about Claudia’s Stratas-sponsored research can be found below:

Claudia’s research aims to understand the molecular underpinnings of depression and suicide with a special focus on child abuse.

She investigates perineuronal nets (PNNs), a mesh of proteins and sugars, that form around certain neurons in the brain. Claudia and colleagues recently showed that severe child abuse is associated with an increase in PNNs in an area of the human brain involved in emotional regulation.

The next steps are to figure out what is regulating this increase in PNNs; they hypothesize that microglia, the immune cells of the brain are involved.

Hopefully, this research can lead to new therapeutic targets for treatment of depression.