Grant: Project Grant

Stress has many consequences for the individual and society at large. It affects our emotional state, alters decision making, changes how we interact with others and sows the seeds for potential physical and mental illness. Current therapeutic approaches for stress disorders are non-selective with variable efficacy. Clearly a new approach is required. Here we propose that the brain responds to actual stress, and also anticipates stress. We propose a series of experiments that seek to understand the interactions between cels that react to stress and those that anticipate stress. We have developed a simple and tractable experimental model for studying and manipulating anticipatory stress and generated exciting new data that reveal an innate anticipatory stress system that can be changed in opposite directions by stress and reward. Learning the natural rules of the brain and then applying them to precisely manipulate circuits is at the frontier of "read-write" therapeutics that harness neural activity itself as a treatment strategy to that provides a "software update" to promote enduring changes in behaviour.