Neural substrates of psychological stress

Psychological stress is defined as a specific relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Higher-order limbic structures are known to process psychological stress and integrate this information downstream to areas such as the hypothalamus and the brainstem, areas involved in the HPA axis control and that are connected to the spinal cord to regulate the sympathetic response to stress. In the lab, we model in mice acute and chronic stress using predator cues, such as fox odor. Using this ethologically-relevant model we use molecular and genetic approaches to provide insights into the central neural pathways that detect and integrate psychological stress. We also investigate how acute and chronic stress affect feeding behavior and physiology.