LSI Seminar Series: How can science help in the mental health crisis? A neurobiological perspective on stress and resilience

In spite of great advances in neuroscience and other related fields, we are confronting a global mental health crisis, which has further accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders and addiction, are triggered and exacerbated by stress. So, how can we deploy our scientific understanding of stress biology to confront and stem this crisis? Critical to this is uncovering the biological bases of differences in susceptibility or resilience to stress itself, and the way these factors shape the risk for mood and addictive disorders.

This talk will highlight the interplay between the role of genes, environment and experience in shaping stress responsiveness. In animal models, it will describe genetic and genomic mechanisms underlying differences in temperament that affect the propensity for anxiety and addiction. It will also highlight the neural circuitry of reactivity to social stress and its relation to future stress susceptibility or resilience. 

In humans, the talk will describe our ongoing research project, "The Michigan Freshman Study of Stress and Resilience," including the use of genetic, psychological and endocrine measures to predict the risk of depression and anxiety disorders, with the goal of deploying interventions to mitigate these risks. Together, these studies should offer a sense of how we can identify key targets, and develop not only treatments but prevention strategies to combat the rising rates of stress-related disorders.