Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, UBC
Louise A. Brown Chair in Neuroscience
Associate Member, Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology
Associate Member, Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences
Member, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health (DMCBH)
Researcher, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute
Director, HD Medical Clinic
Contact
Email: lynn.raymond@ubc.ca
Short Biography
Dr. Lynn Raymond is the Director of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. She is also a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, the Louise A. Brown Chair in Neuroscience and Clinic Director of the Centre for Huntington Disease.
Dr. Raymond is an internationally renowned neuroscientist and neurologist, and her work bridges foundational science and clinical research. She has more than 170 publications, and her work has been cited more than 11,000 times. She has devoted her career to better understanding the specific roles of altered neuronal circuits and amino acid neurotransmitter receptors in Huntington disease, with the aim of developing disease-modifying therapy. Her work is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the John Evans Leadership Fund, and she has held funding from a variety of not-for-profit organizations including the Cure Huntington’s Disease Initiative and Huntington Society of Canada.
Research Focus
Dr. Lynn Raymond combines neuroscience research with clinical practice in Neurology. Her lab investigates pathogenic mechanisms of Huntington disease (HD), as well as glutamate receptor structure-function, modulation and signaling. Working with HD mouse models, Dr. Raymond made significant contributions to focusing the field on altered striatal neuronal NMDA-type glutamate receptor (NMDAR) trafficking and excitatory synaptic signaling as central mechanisms of early striatal dysfunction. More recently, her lab has focused on early changes in cortical-striatal and cortical pyramidal glutamatergic synaptic plasticity, which may contribute to impairments in learning and cognitive flexibility, as well as promote selective neuronal degeneration. The lab also developed an automated home-cage system for assessing motor learning, and uses electrophysiological and optogenetic approaches to study cortical and striatal activity in awake behaving mice in vivo to determine circuit changes underlying HD. Dr. Raymond served as President for the Canadian Association for Neuroscience. As Site PI of several clinical trials and observational studies, she contributes data to publications on multi-centre studies in HD