Grant: Foundation Grant

One in five Canadians suffers from mental illness resulting in an estimated annual cost of $51 billion. Although this places a tremendous strain on society, there have been no significant advances in treatment of mental illness in over forty years. Stress leads to the evolution of mental illness, and may also act as an acute trigger, impacting brain circuitry to cause abnormal behaviours. How this occurs is not known. The work from my lab has shown that stress changes the brain. By understanding how this happens, at the level of individual cells and brain networks, we will better understand the links between stress and subsequent behaviour. The work proposed will provide new insights into specific mechanisms responsible for stress sensitization and the emergence of multiple stress-related disorders. We can use this knowledge to manipulate discrete cell signals that will be the basis of new strategies that can mitigate or erase the effects of stress on the brain.