Congratulations to Professor Heather Brenhouse, who was recently awarded a $1.25M grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The grant will fund five years of investigation into how stress during early life can change the way the circuitry controlling emotional responsiveness develops throughout childhood and adolescence.
Prof. Brenhouse describes her research as follows:
We are testing the hypothesis that early life stress can cause these circuits to develop more rapidly. Normally, the limbic regions of the brain progressively develop connectivity with a frontal region (called the prefrontal cortex) involved in decision-making—this develops all the way through adolescence. Our hypothesis is that early life stress sets off premature development of this connectivity, resulting in the decision-making areas of the brain to develop differently. This would lead to behavioral deficits in adolescence, which is just when these regions are designed to kick-in to full gear and guide behavior. We will be tracing anatomical connections between limbic and frontal regions, and we are collaborating with Craig Ferris to measure the functional connectivity of these regions over development using MRI. Finally, we will be measuring molecular changes in the prefrontal cortex to determine how this altered connectivity affects individual neurons in that region. All of this research will also compare typical development of males and females, which is currently not well understood. We will learn whether males and females that have undergone early life stress may need different kinds of interventions, or these treatments might be more effective at different time-points in males and females.
Early life stress like abuse or neglect in children is known to cause vulnerability to later mental illnesses like anxiety disorders, depression, and schizophrenia. Our research aims to understand how these vulnerabilities arise, and importantly, why they manifest in adolescence which is a special time of development in mammals spanning from rodents to humans.
Well done, Prof. Brenhouse!
