upcoming poster at winter brain!

I’m very excited to be attending Winter Brain next month as a travel fellow! Here’s the abstract if you are interested in what I’ve been working on in my new lab (!!):

Chronic stress suppresses DMS activity to promote habit
Our brains use two strategies to control our behavior: goal-directed action and habit. Goal-directed actions are flexible and prospectively consider the potential outcomes of a behavior. Habits are more inflexible and are executed based on past success, without forethought of their consequences. A balance between goal-directed actions and habits allows for optimal decision making. However, exposure to chronic stress can cause a maladaptive overreliance on habits. This overreliance on habits can contribute to repetitive behaviors, perseveration, and compulsivity. Despite that, the neurobiological mechanisms of stress-potentiated habits are largely unknown. The dorsomedial striatum (DMS) is a central hub for the control of goal-directed behaviors. Inhibiting the DMS is sufficient to attenuate goal-directed action and promote habit. However, whether chronic stress acts via this mechanism to prematurely promote habits is unknown. To test this, we recorded the calcium activity of DMS neurons during action-outcome and habit learning using in-vivo single-cell imaging with miniscopes in both control and stressed mice. We expect that stressed mice will have dampened DMS activity during task-relevant behaviors throughout learning, and that their ensemble activity prematurely resembles that of mice that develop habits normally with overtraining. These results will reveal a specific mechanism for stress-potentiated habits and lay the foundation for future work understanding the inputs responsible for stress-induced DMS neuron suppression.