Cheryl Conrad

The ultimate goal of my research program is to investigate the mechanisms by which stress influences brain plasticity and resilience. The stress response is key to organism survival: It is highly conserved across vertebrate species because it allows organisms to respond to environmental change. However, a stress response that persists or is repeatedly activated can have substantial negative consequences on brain plasticity and resilience. A reduction of brain plasticity is thought to contribute to many psychological conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) and Alzheimer’s disease. Consequently, studying conditions that attenuate or accentuate brain plasticity are essential to understanding the mechanisms of adaptation and many neurological disorders.

In my laboratory’s research, we use a chronic stress model to investigate brain plasticity and resilience. When rats are chronically stressed, they express physiological and behavioral symptoms consistent with depression, including changes in body weight, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity, sleep, motivation, anhedonia and cognition. Breakthroughs in mechanisms revealed with our chronic stress rat model will likely have applications in understanding and treating depression, as well as other psychological conditions.

Questions we are currently pursuing:

1) What are the mechanisms by which chronic stress alters neuronal morphology and function and what underlies the process to improve or recover when chronic stress ends?

2) What factors contribute to one’s susceptibility to chronic stress? How does gender influence the effects of chronic stress on brain morphology and function?

3) How does the emotional salience of a learning task influence cognitive function following chronic stress?