Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Time: 4:00 pm-5:00 pm, followed by reception
Speaker: Jaideep Bains, Ph.D.
Affiliation: Professor, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary

Host: Kay Tye, Ph.D.

Talk title: Social Transmission of Stress.

Abstract: Stress can trigger enduring changes in neural circuits and synapses. Recent findings from our lab show that mice rely on social interactions with others to transmit and extract odor features that transmit and buffer the effects of stress (Sterley et al, Nat Nsci, 2018). The synaptic consequences of transmitted stress on are not distinguishable from authentic stress. Intriguingly, social interactions with unstressed individuals buffer the effects of stress, but only in female subjects. Finally, we show that stress-induced synaptic changes can be transmitted sequentially from the stressed subject to multiple partners. Our findings demonstrate that transmitted stress has the same lasting effects on glutamate synapses as authentic stress and reveal an unexpected role for PVN CRH neurons in transmitting distress signals among individuals.