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When Balmeet Toor was in high school she never could have predicted she’d find her way to a career in mental health research studying something we all do every day: sleep.
Toor was an average high school student, and like many of her peers, opted to take Psych 101 in first year at Carleton University. Unlike many of the classmates in her cohort, however, she discovered a real passion and aptitude for psychology. She went on to pursue a master’s degree in clinical psychology, which included an internship that involved therapy sessions with inmates at the Greene County Jail in Springfield Missouri. She returned to Ottawa and opened a practice providing mental health counselling services, but after two years she decided she needed to pursue a different avenue.
“Research was always my number one priority. I thought that the therapy side would be something that would appeal to me but it turns out that I’m a student for life. I like investigating and writing papers,” says Toor.
What really interested Toor was the sleep lab at The Royal. So in 2017, she knocked on the door of Dr. Stuart Fogel (the director of sleep neuroscience at the Royal’s Institute for Mental Health Research) to ask about a volunteer position.
Sleep was a compelling subject for Toor at the time, and research in this area continues to excite her. Toor is currently working towards her PhD.
“We hardly know anything about sleep. It’s under-studied, even though it’s a human function and we need it to survive. Sleep is important for so many different things: memory, rejuvenating your body, your mental status, everything,” she says.
“You will not find one mental health disorder that does not have sleep as a central issue. The first thing we ask our patients when they come in is ‘how are you sleeping?’ Sleep can help, or if you’re not sleeping, it will worsen your symptoms.”
Toor was one of the recipients of the 2019 IMHR Graduate Student Research Award. The award, given out annually, honours top students at the Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research whose work has a special focus on depression and education.
Toor was recognized for her research, which focused on depression in adolescents, specifically as it pertains to sleep.
There is growing evidence that a lack of sleep is a major factor contributing to mental health problems, particularly major depressive disorder (MDD). It’s been suggested that young people between the age of 13 and 18 with MDD show lower production of sleep spindles (bursts of activity during a certain stage of sleep) compared to healthy controls.
“What those bursts of activity are known for are two things: one is memory consolidation, which is what we’re working on in the lab as well, but they’re also important for sleep maintenance,” explains Toor. “They keep us asleep.”
Toor’s research involved using a homeostatic sleep challenge as a way to increase spindle production.
A homeostatic sleep challenge delays bedtime by three hours and extends sleep time by three hours in the morning. Her research suggests that a homeostatic sleep challenge increases spindles and their characteristics as well, which may have a therapeutic benefit for adolescents with MDD.
Toor’s current area of research is focused on adults, specifically, sleep and memory consolidation (the processes by which a memory becomes stable).
Toor plans to use the funds that came with the award to attend conferences in her field, which may include an upcoming human brain mapping conference in Montreal.
“Attending conferences can be pretty intimidating but it’s phenomenal to see what other people are doing and what you’ve contributed to,” says Toor.
Conferences aside, her goal is pretty simple: to help people.
“My priority is to get this research out there and help one person. I don’t care about getting published and all that. I want to share that research, and the results, and maybe it will help.”