Pubdate: Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2009 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/letters.html
Website: http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Peggy Curran

RESEARCHER EXAMINED PROFOUND, PERMANENT EFFECTS OF ADDICTION

My auntie Maureen used to love a cigarette with her morning coffee. 
So when, after decades of nicotine addiction, she determined to quit, 
she also gave up coffee, knowing it was the only way she'd ever make 
it through breakfast without lighting up.

And all of us know our share of secret party smokers, disciplined gym 
rats who eat healthy and bike to work but invariably start bumming 
smokes halfway into their second pint. They know it's bad for them, 
they may even hate themselves for it in the morning, but sometimes 
the brain just won't take no for an answer.

For the better part of 45 years, Jane Stewart has studied those 
triggers that lay waste to the best intentions, tempting even the 
reformed addict to reach for the forbidden thing.

An emeritus professor of psychology at Concordia University, Stewart 
was a founder and director of the school's Centre for Studies in 
Behavioural Neurobiology, where for several years she directed scores 
of researchers, technicians, post-doctoral fellows and graduate 
students investigating the neurological basis of drug and alcohol 
addiction, eating and eating disorders, sexual attraction and 
circadian rhythms.

Her own research focused on relapse, examining not only the profound 
and sometimes permanent effects that such drugs as cocaine and heroin 
have on the brain's reward centres, but the environmental factors 
that can prompt a person to fall off the wagon - stimuli and 
emotional stresses from the smell of fresh-brewed coffee to a chance 
encounter with an old flame.

Working with laboratory rats, Stewart was among the first scientists 
who attempted to tease out the ways drug abuse changes the brain's chemistry.

"Everything was just beginning back then," said Stewart, who 
graduated from Queen's University in 1956 and earned her PhD from the 
University of London in 1959. She worked as a senior biologist at 
Ayerst Pharmaceuticals before landing a job at Sir George Williams in 1963.

"The effect of drugs on the brain was just beginning to be studied 
and nobody really knew more than anyone else."

By understanding addiction, she believes, we come to understand more 
about the brain itself and about the basic impulses and complex 
systems that make us tick.

In a ceremony at the McCord Museum today, Stewart will receive the 
John B. Sterling Montreal medal from the Montreal branch of her alma 
mater, Queen's University, the latest in a string of accolades 
recognizing her accomplishments as her career winds down. A fellow of 
the Royal Society of Canada, Stewart was inducted last year as an 
Officer in the Order of Canada for her pioneering role in behavioural 
neuroscience and inspiration teaching generations of young researchers.

"I loved teaching, but got my greatest satisfaction from working with 
people in the lab," she said.

"Dr. Jane Stewart represents the best of Queen's and of Montreal," 
said Simo Kruyt, president of the Montreal branch of the Queen's 
alumni association. "She has made great contributions to science, 
both as a researcher and as a teacher."

These days, Stewart, who retired and closed her lab at Concordia last 
year, is happily busy with experiments of a different hue - trying 
her hand as an oil painter.

"I was always interested in art, but I never thought I could do it. 
It's been kind of a revelation."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom