September 2022 Volume 5 Issue 2

Branch Out Innovation

Ty McKinney

Have you ever experienced frustration with doctors when it comes to brain health? Perhaps the frustration comes from the low long-term success rates of pharmaceutical treatments for mental health conditions like depression. Perhaps the frustration comes from uncertainty about dementia with your parents. Perhaps the frustration comes from unanswered questions about using the ketogenic diet to treat your child’s epilepsy. The brain is amazingly complex, which makes us all unique and vibrant people. However, this also means that there a big knowledge gaps in neuroscience and event bigger translation gaps of using that information to improve patient care. If you are looking for more satisfying answers and solutions to brain health, you are not alone. Branch Out Neurological Foundation was created to address this problem based on common experiences across many different disorders of the brain, from Multiple Sclerosis to ADHD. While the brain may be amazingly complex, the dedication of neuroscientists to improve our understanding of its mysteries is slowly improving the lives of patients. Branch Out’s mission is to accelerate that process.

Since Branch Out is solving a problem, it is like one of the many startup companies in the growing Alberta tech ecosystem. However, instead of selling you software, Branch Out is selling hope (i.e., donations) that funding innovative neuroscience research will accelerate the rate of improvements to patient care. Like any good startup, Branch Out created an innovative new innovative way to solve the problem, which in this case is the NeuroCAM model for funding research. Typically, granting agencies look for the lowest risk projects to fund to increase the likelihood of a “publishable” project in peer-reviewed

scientific journals. In contrast, Branch Out not only looks for publishable projects, but also high-risk and high-impact neuroscience studies that would be less competitive with bigger granting agencies. However, some of the greatest discoveries in medical science (penicillin and antidepressants) were discovered by accident, highlighting the value of these riskier studies. To manage that risk, Branch Out found a niche in funding research that looked at a number of specific modalities of holistic brain health: 1) Nutraceutical 2) Mind and Body modalities 3) Personalized Medicine 4) NeuroCam Tech. By limiting its scope to these 4 modalities of brain health, Branch Out was able to build a community of world-class neuroscientists that all wanted to see improvements in the impact of their research. Importantly, many Branch Out funded studies involve multiple modalities, highlighting how discoveries in one modality can inform studies on a different modality.

Nutraceutical

When Branch Out was founded back in 2013, there were only small pockets of research on how nutrition could influence brain health. Part of this reason is that is hard to enforce patents on a diet and naturally occurring substances, so this kind of research was not as strongly supported by non-government funding sources (e.g., pharmaceutical companies). By including Nutraceuticals as a funding theme, Branch Out actually created demand for this kind of research as some research labs expanded their scope to advantage of this new supply of funding in the local ecosystem. One such lab led by Dr. Jong Rho at the University of Calgary was interested in if the ketogenic diet (high fat, high protein, high fiber, low carb), which had a growing evidence base for treating pediatric epilepsy. Branch Out funded several of Dr. Rho’s students and the next year we received even more applications on the ketogenic diet. Overall, Branch Out has now funded several studies on the ketogenic diet testing its efficacy to treat not only epilepsy, but also autism spectrum disorder and pain in spinal cord injury patients. Unfortunately, some of these studies will not produce positive results, but in the entrepreneurial spirit, Branch Out believes it is still important to fund the studies anyway if world-class methods are used to conduct the studies.

Mind and Body Modalities

Many different cultures around the world recognized the overlap between the health of the mind and body and have developed therapeutic techniques, practices, and ceremonies, such as mindfulness and yoga. While many mind and body modalities are ancient, with some documented histories going back thousands of years, investigating these modalities through the lens of neuroscience is relatively new. As much as Branch Out looks to exciting technologies to improve brain health, it also sees value in understanding the neuroscientific principles of how these ancient practices work. In the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation, Branch Out has funded research on wîwîp’son (swing) healing therapy developed by Dr. Darlene Auger, a Nehiyaw (Cree) woman. Wîwîp’son is a traditional parenting practice where one swings and sings to a baby to lull them to sleep in a most loving and nurturing way. Dr. Auger has been using swing sessions with adults that may not have experienced this kind of love and nurturing as infants, and may be experiencing trauma and chronic stress. Dr. Auger is working with Dr. Kelvin Jones at the University of Alberta, who thinks there might be something special about the frequency of the swinging that could activate particular brain networks. The research used wearable brainwave recording technology to get a glimpse of what is happening inside the brain as well as the heart and breathing during the healing swing session. Together, they are using cutting-edge science to validate the ancient wisdom of the Indigenous peoples of Alberta as a culturally informed and evidence-based way to promote the recovery from trauma.

Personalized Medicine

We are all unique and vibrant individuals, until we enter a research study. Then the conventional approach is to treat everyone the same, creating a one-size-fits all mentality within clinical science and medical practice. Not every treatment will work for every person and Branch Out believes it is critical to understand why these differences exist to offer the next level of care for brain health. For example, when someone experiences a concussion, there is a risk of developing the much longer-lasting post-concussive syndrome, yet there are not currently ways to understand who carries that risk and who doesn’t. To answer that question, Branch Out funded research conducted by Julie Joyce to adapt research on balance-based symptoms experienced by some concussion patients into new assessment approaches that could flag patients as having higher risk for post-concussive syndrome. However, once a patient has been flagged, what now? Julie has also conducted research on how to personalize exercise-based rehabilitation to accelerate the recovery of concussion patients. Her research uses the patient’s own data to customize exercise protocols to maximize the brain health benefits while minimizing the risk of exaggerating the brain injury through excessive exercise.

NeuroCAM Tech

The most exciting discoveries in neuroscience will not matter much if they don’t make the leap from the research lab to the lives of neurological patients. This is where the development of digital health and neuroscience technology to bridge this gap is so critical, as it helps commercialize laboratory-based research into evidence-based and accessible treatment options. Branch Out funds research all along the commercialization spectrum, from the foundational science studies needed to develop technology to randomized control trials, to commercialization efforts. For example, consider the relatively new Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology, which in 2018 had people excited about the possibility of letting people type and move mice through their brainwaves. However, Dr. Adam Kirton at the University of Calgary recognized some barriers to implementing BCI technology with kids that have Cerebral Palsy and other mobility disorders. Branch Out funded his lab to conduct some foundational science research on how to address these barriers, which has led Dr. Kirton to found BCI4Kids and share this technology with the world. Keep your eyes posted for BCI4Kids at events like Beakerhead, where you can learn about all about this technology and the opportunity it holds to empower children with mobility issues.

If you enjoyed learning about the research that Branch Out has funded across the 4 modalities of NeuroCAM, you can satisfy your curiosity through more blogs and science stories on our website. Follow us on social media to get more holistic neuroscience news on your feeds and learn about our upcoming fundraiser events, like the Bike Tour at Panorama, B.C. and Your Brain on Art. We are excited to have you as part of the community that supports brains at their best.