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."