Columbia University in the City of New York

Sep 15, 20201:00 pm
Seminar

Mechanisms of fear, threat and trauma memory encoding: Relevance for PTSD

Featuring Kerry Ressler, Chief Scientific Officer, James and Patricia Poitras Chair in Psychiatry, Chief, Division of Depression & Anxiety Disorders, McLean Hospital, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

September 15th, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

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This seminar will be held online. Register here

Stress responses and threat processing are central to understanding debilitating disorders such as Anxiety, Depression and PTSD.  Progress has been made in understanding the neural circuits underlying the ‘engram’ of threat-or fear-memory formation that complements a decades-old appreciation of the neurobiology of fear and stress, involving hub structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for example, manifests after exposure to a traumatic event and is characterized by avoidance/numbing, intrusive symptoms and flashbacks, mood and cognitive disruptions, and hyperarousal/reactivity symptoms. These symptoms reflect dysregulation of the fear system likely caused by poor fear inhibition or extinction, increased generalization, and enhanced consolidation or acquisition of fear. These phenotypes can be modeled in animal subjects using Pavlovian threat conditioning, allowing investigation of the underlying neurobiology of normative and pathological fear.  

I will review human neuroimaging and genetic approaches as well as optogenetic, chemogenetic, and cell-type specific transcriptomic approaches in rodent models to understanding circuits that mediate threat processing. The application of next-generation cell-type specific or neural circuit-specific approaches provide a mechanistic understanding of circuits and behaviors for the rational design of targeted, circuit specific, interventions for the treatment and prevention of these disorders. 

In summary, I will discuss the evidence for genetic, neurobiological, and neural circuit mechanisms to understanding PTSD.  Furthermore, I will discuss future approaches to pharmacotherapy and potential treatments and preventions for PTSD that have been developed via a bench to bedside translational models.

Those who wish to meet the speaker during their visit should contact Wei-Li Chang.

The Columbia Neuroscience Seminar series is a collaborative effort of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, the Department of Neuroscience, the Doctoral Program in Neurobiology and Behavior and the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, and with support from the Kavli Institute for Brain Science.

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