Psychology Colloquium: “Plasticity supporting the impacts of traumatic stress”

Traumatic stress increases risk for several major mental health conditions. Traditionally, associative learning processes have been thought to support such risk, enabling cues present at the time of trauma to subsequently promote symptoms. Expanding beyond this associative framework, I will share my work highlighting how trauma differentially alters the neural circuits underlying associative and non-associative defensive behaviors. Specifically, I will demonstrate that trauma-induced plasticity in the amygdala supports heightened stress sensitivity, whereas plasticity in the ventral hippocampus supports increases in anxiety-related behavior, and both of these behavioral changes are independent of associative fear.

Speakers

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  Dr. Zachary Pennington

  Mount Sinai School of Medicine