social stress

Decoding stress vulnerability

Although stress can be considered as an ongoing process that helps an organism to cope with present and future challenges, when it is too intense or uncontrollable, it can lead to adverse consequences for physical and mental health. Social stress specifically, is a highly prevalent traumatic experience, present in multiple contexts, such as war, bullying and interpersonal violence, and it has been linked with increased risk for major depression and anxiety disorders. Nevertheless, not all individuals exposed to strong stressful events develop psychopathology, with the mechanisms of resilience and vulnerability being still under investigation. During this talk, I will identify key gaps in our knowledge about stress vulnerability and I will present our recent data from our contextual fear learning protocol based on social defeat stress in mice.

How do we sleep?

There is no consensus on if sleep is for the brain, body or both. But the difference in how we feel following disrupted sleep or having a good night of continuous sleep is striking. Understanding how and why we sleep will likely give insights into many aspects of health. In this talk I will outline our recent work on how the prefrontal cortex can signal to the hypothalamus to regulate sleep preparatory behaviours and sleep itself, and how other brain regions, including the ventral tegmental area, respond to psychosocial stress to induce beneficial sleep. I will also outline our work on examining the function of the glymphatic system, and whether clearance of molecules from the brain is enhanced during sleep or wakefulness.

Basal amygdala-nucleus accumbens glutamate neurons are important for reward behaviour and both are dysregulated by chronic social stress in mice

Exposure to chronic social stress of immature animals experienced early-life seizures: Behavioral Phenotyping

Fear circuit-based neurobehavioral signatures and transcriptional networks promoting resilience to chronic social stress

Nicotinic receptors promote susceptibility to social stress in female mice linked with neuroadaptations within VTA dopamine neurons

Nodes of Ranvier are modulated by chronic psychosocial stress in mice and undergo axon-specific structural remodeling in response to chronic neuronal activation

The long-term effects of adolescent social stress on alcohol-related behaviors in adulthood

FENS Forum 2024