Developmental Differences In The Role Of The Medial Prefrontal Cortex In Fear Regulation
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$354,481.00
Summary
This project explores the neural circuitry involved in fear expression early in life, and how early life experiences can affect this circuitry. A better understanding of the neural circuitry underlying fear regulation across development is essential given that the majority of anxiety disorders first appear in childhood or early adolescence.
Disorder in the circuits that process emotional stimuli are central in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. In this grant we will study the circuits that are inolved in fear learnng. Our results will provide the background to developing more effective therapies for a range of anxiety related disorders such as generalised anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder.
Preclinical Investigation Into Novel Therapeutics To Treat Drug Abuse During Adolescence And Adulthood
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$713,684.00
Summary
To investigate early life drug abuse and its treatment, drug-consumption and seeking behaviour will be examined in adolescent rats. We expect dopamine immaturity during adolescence to be a critical factor in persistence of drug-seeking in adolescence.
Emotionally traumatic experiences are well remembered and, in some instances, frequent reminders of these events can lead to the development of fear-related anxiety disorders such as phobia or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The experiments outlined in this proposal will examine how a novel epigenetic mechanism of gene regulation contributes to the transition from the retrieval of a fear memory to its inhibition through a process called extinction.
Mnemonic Segregation: Understanding The Neural Circuitry Of Parkinson’s Disease Dementia.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$408,768.00
Summary
To investigate neural circuitry allowing distinct memories to co-exist while minimising interference. Dementia involves a breakdown of this system, where memories are no longer segregated or tagged by environmental features. I also aim to find behavioural techniques which allow memories formed in therapy to generalise to patients’ home environments. By understanding the process of segregating memories we can develop interventions where this fails and manipulate it to improve clinical practice.
Extinguishing Fearful And Addictive Brain During Adolescence
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$428,437.00
Summary
Exposure therapies rely on the decrease in emotions to previous triggers due to the exposure to those triggers without an emotional event in a safe environment. Adolescence marks a period of maturation that is particularly resistant to such therapies, due to the imbalance of different receptors in their prefrontal cortex. We will redress such chemical imbalance by using existing clinically-approved drugs, and facilitate behavioural therapies to treat adolescent anxiety and substance abuse.
The aim of this research project is to provide critical new information on the functional changes in brain circuits mediating cognitive-emotional integration during decision-making. This project will use a powerful and unique combination of behavioural, circuit-level, cellular, genetic and imagining tools to assess decision processes in healthy rodent and human subjects, and in animal models of, and humans suffering from, specific psychiatric disorders.