PNB Seminar Series Spring 2027 | Physiology & Neurobiology

April 7, 2027

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Time: 10:30 AM
Location: BPB 130
Host: Linnaea Ostroff

Seminar Title: Adversity during development rebalances salience circuits and social behavior

Synopsis

Social behavior is essential across the lifespan, and its disruption is among the earliest-emerging features of psychiatric illness. The infant brain is not a smaller version of the adult brain: it is organized around the caregiver, and early interactions provide a template for later social behavior. How does this template get written into developing circuits, and how does adverse care rewrite it? Using rodent models of early-life adversity and circuit tools adapted for the behaving infant, our lab traces the path from caregiving experience to social behavior. I will discuss how adversity recruits amygdala and habenula circuits to shift infants from approach toward avoidance, why pups exposed to the same adversity can diverge in outcome, and how peripheral metabolic signals link the body’s response to adverse care with the developing brain. Together, this work points toward developmentally timed circuit and peripheral targets for intervention.

PNB Seminar Series

Spring 2027

January 27, 2027

February 3, 2027

February 10, 2027

February 17, 2027

February 24, 2027

March 3, 2027

March 10, 2027

March 17, 2027

March 24, 2027

March 31, 2027

April 7, 2027

April 14, 2027

April 21, 2027