CAREER: Impact of stress coping style on cognitive processes and the underlying neuromolecular mechanisms

生物体的持续生存往往取决于从以往的社会和环境挑战中学习的能力。性格类型、学习环境、压力和遗传是影响认知能力（如学习和记忆）的一些变量。这些因素是如何相互作用导致个体之间的学习和记忆差异的，人们知之甚少。人格类型会对不同的挑战产生认知、行为和生理反应。具有主动性（即“大胆”）人格类型的生物体更可能倾向于冒险，以常规为导向，并表现出较低的压力反应。相反，反应性（即“害羞”）动物更厌恶风险，对环境变化敏感，并且有更高的应激反应。该项目将研究人格类型如何限制学习和记忆能力，并阐明潜在的神经生物学和遗传机制。对学习环境、大脑动力学和遗传学如何调节学习和记忆的研究，将为理解驱动偏见认知反应的因素提供目标，并作为限制行为变异的重要因素。该项目还将为内布拉斯加大学奥马哈分校和奥马哈公立学区的K-12学生提供机会，进行行为神经遗传学实验，提高科学素养和理解力。暴露在压力下往往会导致学习，过去经验的记忆可以告诉未来的行为反应。学习和记忆表现的差异部分归因于环境条件（例如，背景，强化类型）和人格类型。区分不同人格类型的突触可塑性和神经传递的关键差异（例如，主动和反应性应激应对方式）也可能影响学习和记忆的差异。学习和记忆表现的变化可能是由大脑区域特定的神经活动模式驱动的。神经网络的活动反过来又可能受到突触可塑性相关基因表达的安排和影响。实验将确定情境和强化类型如何与人格类型相互作用，从而产生联想和空间学习和记忆表现的变化。此外，这些研究将阐明神经和基因转录活动如何解释强化类型之间和内部学习和记忆的变化。具体来说，候选基因在学习中的必要性将通过基因表达的操纵来评估。本项目的实验将在以下方面取得进展：(1)学习环境和人格类型（即压力应对方式）如何交叉；(2)基因表达和神经活动如何整合以介导学习和记忆的变化，这可能解释行为可塑性的限制。它还将为比较方法奠定基础，以评估已确定的神经分子机制是否类似地解释其他分类群的行为差异。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Continued survival often depends upon the ability of organisms to learn from previous social and environmental challenges. Personality type, learning environment, stress, and genetics are some of the variables that can influence cognitive capabilities (e.g. learning and memory). How these factors interact to contribute to differences in learning and memory between individuals, is poorly understood. Personality type can consistently bias cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to disparate challenges. Organisms with proactive (i.e. “bold”) personality type, are more likely more risk-prone, routine oriented, and show a low stress response. In contrast, reactive (i.e. “shy”) animals, are more risk-averse, sensitive to environmental change, and have a higher stress response. This project will examine how an personality type constrains learning and memory capabilities and elucidate the underlying neurobiological and genetic mechanisms. Investigation of how learning context, brain dynamics, and genetics modulate learning and memory, will provides targets for understanding what could drive biased cognitive responses and serve as important factors in constraining behavioral variation. This project will also opportunities for University of Nebraska at Omaha and K-12 students of the Omaha Public Schools district to perform behavioral neurogenetics experiments and enhance scientific literacy and comprehension.Exposure to stress often results in learning, and the memory of past experience can inform future behavioral response. Differences in learning and memory performance are attributable, in part, to environmental conditions (e.g. context, reinforcement type) and personality type. Key differences in synaptic plasticity and neurotransmission that distinguish alternative personality types (e.g. proactive and reactive stress coping styles) may also inform differences in learning and memory. Variations in learning and memory performance may be driven by specific neural activity patterns across brain regions. Activity of and in neural network in turn, may be arranged and influenced by the expression of genes related to synaptic plasticity. The experiments will identify how context and reinforcement type interact with personality type to produce variation in associative and spatial learning and memory performance. Further, these studies will elucidate how neural and gene transcriptional activities can account for variation in learning and memory between and within reinforcement types. Specifically, the necessity of candidate genes in learning will be assessed via the manipulation of gene expression. The experiments in this project will lead to advancements in understanding how (1) learning environment and personality type (i.e stress coping style) intersect and (2) gene expression and neural activity integrate to mediate variation of learning and memory that may explain constraints on behavioral plasticity. It will also set a foundation for comparative approaches to assess if the identified neuromolecular mechanisms similarly explain behavioral variation in other taxa.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.