Asthma and Anxiety

Adolescence is a developmental period sensitive to perturbations, and repeated exposure to health or environmental challenges can affect adult neuronal and behavioral processes, which are associated with internalizing disorders like anxiety and depression. Asthma is a common adolescent chronic health challenge, affecting 9% of U.S. adolescents, and often comorbid with anxiety and depression. People who have asthma are twice as likely to develop one of these disorders compared to people who have not had asthma, and this comorbidity development can occur as early as adolescence. However, little is known about the neurobehavioral impacts of chronic adolescent asthma. Our lab has developed a mouse model of asthma, and we are investigating which symptom(s) of asthma may be involved in mechanisms underlying this comorbidity with internalizing disorders.

Causes and Consequences of Behavioral Inhibition: an Animal Model

Behavioral inhibition (i.e. withdrawal/motor inhibition in response to the unfamiliar) in children has been associated with increased risk for anxiety, mood disorders, and atopic disorders. To provide an animal model of this early developing human trait, to study the biological and environmental conditions that influence its development, we have been validating a rodent model. This work involves verifying concomitant physiological and environmental processes that are associated with human behavioral inhibition.

Adolescent Stress and Adult Health

Adolescence is an important period of development when non-familial social interactions increase in frequency and complexity, neurobiological and immunological systems are still maturing. Adolescence is also a period when mental health issues become more prevalent. Using animal models, we study how social and non-social challenges during the adolescent period influence long-term health outcomes, with a goal of identifying underlying biological mechanisms.

Stability/Instability of Physiological Stress Processes

Personality or traits can be defined as individual response biases that are stable within an individual both across time and across situations. We have been examining the proposition that individual physiological responses, particularly fear- and stress-associated responses, are trait-like – i.e. vary from individual to individual, and show stability in magnitude or duration within an individual over time and across situations. This physiological stability or instability could have important cumulative consequences on health.