Neural circuits underlying stress-induced repetitive behaviours

Details:

For more details and registration, please email Tatum Chan at chan.tatum@cityu.edu.hk.

Abstract:

Prolonged exposure to negative stressors could be harmful if a subject cannot respond appropriately. Strategies evolved to respond to stress, including repetitive displacement behaviours, are important in maintaining behavioural homoeostasis. However, our understanding of the neurobiological basis of repetitive behaviours is limited. In rodents, self-grooming is a frequently observed repetitive behaviour believed to contribute to post-stress de-arousal with adaptive value. In the rat model, we identified a di-synaptic pathway in the hippocampal-septo-hypothalamic network that regulates stress induced self-grooming, a behaviour that appears to be associated with positive affective valence. Optogenetic activation of this circuit triggers delayed but robust excessive grooming with microstructures closely resembling those evoked by emotional stress. Consistently, inhibition of this circuit significantly suppresses grooming triggered by emotional stress. Our results uncover a previously unknown limbic circuitry involved in regulating stress-induced self-grooming and pinpoint a critical role of lateral septum in this ethologically important behaviour.

Speaker:

 

Prof. Wing-Ho Yung graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in biological science with first class honors. He was a recipient of the Commonwealth Scholarship and the Croucher Foundation Fellowship that supported his DPhil study and post-doctoral training in the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Prof. Julian Jack. Currently as a professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences of CUHK, he had received the Master Teacher award, Faculty of Medicine and the Research Excellence Award, CUHK. He has broad research interests in understanding the functions and mechanisms of the nervous system in health and in disease, emphasizing the underlying neural circuits and the roles of neuroplasticity. This is achieved by employing a multitude of cutting-edge neuroscience and computational techniques.