This event will be in-person only and will not offer a Zoom option

Dani Dumitriu, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (in Psychiatry)

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Of Mice and Men: Investigating individual and social resiliency mechanisms across species

The overarching mission of my research program is to uncover and harness principles of health and resilience using a cross-species, multiscale, multimodal approach. My lab has extended its basic science work to national partnerships to develop actionable clinical change towards resilient health outcomes at the population level, especially during childhood development. In this talk, I will give a 360 o overview of seemingly disparate projects: 1) lab rodent stress models to understand neuroconnectomic principles differentiating stress-susceptible and stress-resilient individuals; 2) wild rat trap-and-release to understand the stress-response of one of the most notoriously resilient animals; and 3) human longitudinal observational and interventional studies to prospectively identify the building blocks of future health. I will then tie these efforts together into a developmental model of two independent circuits of resilience — individual resiliency and social resiliency, the development of which is likely supported by different processes during different critical periods. I will end with a reframing of social resilience—away from a focus on the individual as the unit of measure, and toward a dyadic measure of the information transfer in “the space between” two individuals sharing a social bond. 

Relevant Publications:

Structure and function differences in the prelimbic cortex to basolateral amygdala circuit mediate trait vulnerability in a novel of acute social defeat stress in male mice

Association of birth during the COVID-19 Pandemic with Neurodevelopmental status at 6 months in Infants with and without in Utero exposure to maternal SARS-CoV2 Infection

Host(s): Carol Mason (Faculty) 

Please contact [email protected] with any questions.