Research and activities of the Neurobiology of Stress and Treatment Response – Juan Pablo Lopez group

Using wild-type and genetically modified animal models, our research programme tackles psychiatrically-relevant questions such as:

• Why does one individual develop psychiatric symptoms, whereas another does not?
• What are the relevant critical or sensitive periods of development where adversity becomes neurobiologically embedded?
• What are the neurobiological mechanisms underlying clinical improvement?
• What are the biological correlates of treatment response?

Our strategy consists of implementing a combination of novel, automated, and high-throughput behavioral and molecular experimental approaches to:

1. Elucidate the mechanisms by which stressors are perceived and processed into molecular, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses, under healthy and pathological conditions, in males and females.
2. Characterize critical time windows and neurobiological circuits contributing to the molecular, cellular and behavioral outcomes associated with susceptibility and resilience to stressful stimuli, as well as treatment response.
3. Identify and characterize “activated” cell populations and circuits involved in the regulation of stress responses and rapid-acting antidepressant effects.
4. Identify novel behavioral and molecular predictors of stress susceptibility and treatment response.

To achieve these objectives our laboratory implements a wide range of techniques, such as (a) state-of-the-art transcriptomics, including “bulk” and single-cell resolution, (b) behavioral mouse models of stress and anxiety, (c) automated behavioral tracking and analysis systems of complex behaviors for groups of mice, (d) diverse transgenic mouse models, and (e) viral-mediated gene manipulations in behaving mice.