Psychology Colloquium: Effects of stress and local striatal circuits on goaldirected behavior

Stress has a profound, long-lasting impact on later decision-making, and understanding the neural basis of these effects may lead to better treatments and functional outcomes for those suffering from stress-related disorders. The primary goal of my research is to uncover how stressful events activate and change neural circuits to alter later reinforcement-related behaviors. In this talk, I will first discuss how striatal circuits drive broad goal-directed behaviors. In particular, I will highlight my recent work demonstrating that low-threshold spiking interneurons locally gate dopamine release in the dorsomedial striatum to facilitate goaldirected learning. Next, I will discuss how stress experience alters mesocorticolimbic and corticostriatal circuitry to disrupt decision-making for both appetitive and drug rewards. As a graduate student, I showed that intermittent social defeat stress in adult male and female rats augments the dopaminergic response to drug rewards, promoting escalated cocaine taking and seeking behaviors. As a senior postdoc, I am now integrating my graduate and postdoctoral lines of work to explore how stress across development impacts complex decision-making in adulthood. In the age of COVID, now more than ever it is critical to understand the long-lasting impacts of social isolation, so I will also share my most recent K01-funded work exploring how adolescent social isolation impacts value-based choice in adult female and male mice, as well as the underlying corticostriatal circuitry.

Speakers

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  Elizabeth Holly

  University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine