Nearly 1 in every 5 adults in the United States suffers from a mental health disorder - leading to significant diminishment of quality of life and economic burden. In an effort to identify more efficacious therapeutics, we seek to investigate the mechanistic impact of previously understudied contributing factors including social stress and neuroimmune signaling on discrete neuronal circuits, and how they give rise to aberrant behavioral phenotypes associated with stress-related mental health disorders.
Current research questions of interest include:
How does social stress impact alcohol drinking?
Social stress is a prevailing factor in the lives of all social species and can motivate the misuse of reinforcing drugs such as alcohol, leading to the development of an alcohol use disorder (AUD) in susceptible individuals. An individual’s standing in a social hierarchy (i.e. social rank) is inversely related to alcohol consumption in rodents and humans, highlighting the conserved impact of subordination stress on motivation for alcohol. Social rank can also influence how individuals respond to challenges such as social isolation, which is a particularly profound stressor with increasing human relevance. Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms by which social experiences drive alcohol drinking could have important translational implications for AUD. Our lab is interested in asking:
What are mechanisms underlying social stress-associated alcohol drinking?
Can we reverse social stress-induced neuroadaptations to prevent escalated drinking?
How do cytokines influence circuits and behavior?
Immune signaling is an untapped link between neural activity and behavior. Immune mediators (e.g. cytokines) regulate sleep, mood, cognition, social interaction, and contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders including addiction and anxiety. In addition to their immunological role, cytokines operate as neuromodulators shaping all levels of neuronal computation from structural and functional synaptic integration to action potential firing and neurotransmitter release. Despite the substantial impact of cytokines on neurons, we do not know how cytokines influence circuit-level neural dynamics, which is essential to fundamentally understand how cytokines shape information processing in the brain. To fill this gap, we will address the central questions:
How do cytokines interact with neural circuits to alter neural representation and behavior?
Can we harness immune mechanisms to reprogram circuits to treat mental health disorders?
How do neuroimmune mechanisms contribute to social status-related susceptibility to mental health disorders?
Human socioeconomic status is one of the strongest predictors of health and mortality, however little is known regarding the neurobiological mechanisms predisposing individuals of low social status to mental health disorders including addiction and anxiety. One possibility is that neuroimmune mechanisms drive social status-related susceptibility. We will explore whether neuroimmune signatures can predict individual differences in behavioral phenotypes related to mental health disorders - to ultimately identify biomarkers and preventative therapeutic strategies.