Neuronal circuits modulating stress response in zebrafish

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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.