Neuronal circuits modulating stress response in zebrafish

对轻度短期压力的反应对动物和人类都是有益的，因为被称为压力源的不利的身体和心理事件会激活生存所必需的适应性反应，例如避免潜在的威胁。然而，创伤性或慢性压力会引起许多疾病，包括精神疾病，如创伤后应激障碍，抑郁症和职业倦怠。总的来说，与压力有关的疾病给个人和社会带来了沉重的负担。由于哺乳动物大脑的体积和复杂性，很难全面研究压力对大脑的影响。我建议利用紧凑的尺寸和透明度的幼体斑马鱼的大脑来了解体内的神经元机制介导的压力反应。斑马鱼的神经元回路调节应激反应共享广泛的解剖和功能的同源性与哺乳动物的。值得注意的是，斑马鱼已被用于研究压力引起的精神疾病。该项目的目标是了解下丘脑中的基因标记神经元的小群体，集中参与处理压力刺激的大脑区域，如何控制对压力的行为反应，以及它们的功能障碍如何导致病理行为。

Responses to mild short-term stress are beneficial to animals and humans, since adverse physical and psychological events, known as stressors, activate adaptive reactions essential for survival, such as avoidance of potential threats. However, traumatic or chronic stress can give rise to many disorders, including psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and occupational burnout. Collectively, stress-related pathologies represent a great burden for individuals and society. It has been difficult to comprehensively study the effects of stress on mammalian brains, due to their large size and complexity. I propose to take advantage of the compact size and transparency of the larval zebrafish brain to understand the neuronal mechanisms mediating responses to stress in vivo. The neuronal circuits regulating responses to stress in zebrafish share extensive anatomical and functional homologies with mammalian ones. Significantly, zebrafish has been used to study stress-induced mental illness. The goal of this project is to understand how small populations of genetically-labelled neurons in the hypothalamus, a brain region centrally involved in processing stressful stimuli, control behavioral responses to stress, and how their dysfunction leads to pathological behavior.