Sexual dimorphism in anxiety disorders: multi-node time map of maladaptive developing brain circuits.

Anxiety is a highly prevalent (30% among adults) major global health issue.

Women have two times increased risk to develop anxiety compared to men, with an increased sensitivity starting from early age (e.g. 38% of adolescent girls in Sweden self-report anxiety and stress).

Yet, the cellular and molecular state transition causal to long-lasting disorders, and to the increased sensitivity in females and young girls in the adolescence time window, remains unknown.My unique approach, long-term vision and methodology strive to ultimately uncover how single neurons encode stimuli of emotional valence in vivo in the healthy brain and identify the causality between activity modes/genetic cell states and behavioral transition to anxiety disorders.I will map the SYNAPTIC, MOLECULAR and FUNCTIONAL FINGERPRINT of adult vs adolescent stress on the so far undescribed Estrogen Receptor α (Esr1) expressing Insular Cortex projection-identified neurons.

The proposed project has the potential to significantly advance our mechanistic understanding of prevalence of sexually dimorphic anxiety disorders in women.

The overall scope is to identify new targets to restore of circuits imbalance in psychiatric disorders.Key points of my research are critical timings (i.e. adolescence), susceptible groups (i.e sex), and known environmental risk factors (i.e prolonged stress exposure), coupled to rigorous functional circuit dissection with single neuron resolution in vivo in behaving mice.