Dear One and All


You are most cordially welcome to attend the next in the WHAT (Waterside Hypotheses / Aquatic Theories) Talks this coming Sunday, 13th March.
​

The link to the Zoom meeting is below. Please feel free to share this link with anyone you think might be interested in why we are so different from chimpanzees, and this month, specifically, why we have brains 3x bigger than them.


Professor Stephen Cunnane will be speaking from Canada on...


"Human brain evolution: how a shore-based habitat would help overcome the nutritional and metabolic constraints on brain expansion."

The big brain is the defining feature of humans yet we understand almost nothing about how it evolved. My contribution to this subject has been to work backwards from the constraints that any brain faces, let alone one trying to expand: what does it need to develop and function optimally? If it expanded during evolution (which is rare), what constraints did it overcome to do so? The vulnerabilities of our brain today reveal a lot about those constraints, especially the nutritional and metabolic constraints. Having a big brain is not necessarily an advantage; many species have done very well without one. Expanding the brain 3-fold is therefore highly unusual because it is very difficult to achieve. And it has to start in infants; if brain development (let alone expansion) goes wrong at that stage, there is no fixing it, so infants are the focus of this question: how did hominins get it right?

Biography

Stephen Cunnane is a professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Sherbrooke, and researcher at the Research Center on Aging. His team is assessing the links between deteriorating brain energy metabolism and risk of cognitive decline during aging. They were the first to show that ketones can at least partially correct the brain energy deficit in older people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease. This observation that led to the concept of ‘brain energy rescue’ by ketones to treat neurodegenerative disorders. In the recent 6-month BENEFIC trial in MCI, his ketogenic medium chain triglyceride drink improved outcomes in all five cognitive domains. It was commercialized as BrainXpert by Nestlé in 2020 and is the first treatment available for MCI.

Dr. Cunnane has published over 350 research papers and five books, two of which highlight the key role of ketones in brain expansion during human evolution. He was elected to the French National Academy of Medicine in 2009. In 2016, he was inducted as a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL). He received the Chevreul Medal from the French Society for the Study of Lipids in 2017 for his research on fats, nutrition and health




Prof Stephen Cunnane



As this is a worldwide event, and Stephen has kindly agreed to start his talk at 9 am in the morning, please pay careful attention to local start times which are summarised in the graphic below.





In the UK, this is 2pm on Sunday.
Central Europe (Belgium, Sweden Poland etc) 3pm.
Western Australia 10pm in the evening.
Sydney, Melbourne Canberra etc. (sorry) midnight.


As always, the meeting will be recorded and put on-line for posterity afterwards.


See previous talks here...


https://whattalks.com/talks


TALKS
Marc Verhaegen was born in Turnhout, in Belgium, in 1951. He studied medicine in Antwerp and Louvain between 1969-1976 and has been a general practitioner ever since, in the village of Putte (between Antwerp and Brussels.
whattalks.com

Please get in touch if you know anyone else that might want to be put on this mailing list.


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ZOOM LINK FOLLOWS.......


(If someone could let me know asap if they spot any errors, it would be greatly appreciated!)


Algis Kuliukas is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: WHAT Talk #05 - Stephen Cunnane
Time: Mar 13, 2022 09:45 PM Perth

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/99427730385?pwd=bzdnSXhBVU45bXd2YUFaWllZRGFSZz09

Meeting ID: 994 2773 0385
Passcode: 002636
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Meeting ID: 994 2773 0385
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Dr Algis Kuliukas
Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology