About the Lab
Our laboratory is focused on the cellular mechanisms and neural circuits regulating vulnerability to social stress. We investigate social stress using a social defeat model in Syrian hamsters called conditioned defeat. We use a variety of approaches to investigate the stress vulnerability including chemogenetics, neural tract tracing, intracranial microinjections, immunohistochemistry, Golgi-Cox staining, hormone assays, and behavioral testing. We are particularly interested in coping strategies and the neurobiological mechanisms controlling stress resilience. Our goal is to identify the mechanisms by which social experience builds stress resilience and thereby uncover novel approaches for preventing and treating stress-related mental illness. |
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Awards and Shout Outs
We had a TON of award winners in the lab this spring. Jeff Kelly won a Yates Dissertation Fellowship for 2023-24. Alonnah Brewer, Alex Gillespie, and Anna Temple each won a 2023 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Also, 6 (yes 6!!) students won best poster awards at the 2023 EUReCA spring symposium including [from left to right: Alex Gillespie, Ben Kilgore, Jessica Kearney, Yaswanth Singamaneni, Yash Deo, and Ashely Wells (not shown)]. Congratulations to all these amazing students! Also, a big shout out goes to Jenna Laymon who defended her Master Thesis this spring and is entering the PhD program in Translational Neuroscience at Wayne State University. Congrats!! |