March 28, 2018
Dr. Susan Sangha (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences was recently awarded with $1.2M for 5-year from the National Institute of Mental Health entitled “Neural circuitry of safety, fear and reward cue discrimination”. The proposed studies will test how inputs from the prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area to the basolateral amygdala are mediating safety-fear-reward discrimination in male and female rats. Recent data from the Sangha laboratory shows that females in this task are more fear responsive during safety cues and more reward responsive when reward is available compared to males. By determining how sex differences in this neuronal circuit are generating sex differences in safety-fear-reward behavioral discrimination, behavioral and pharmacological treatments in both males and females diagnosed with emotion dysregulation disorders can be improved.
