ESR 2: Karina Santiago Gonzalez          Location: Newcastle University

Supervisors: Tom Smulders  and Tim Boswell          

The stress response is a deeply conserved trait of vertebrate physiology, and is essentially the same from fishes to mammals. However, the forebrains in different vertebrate lineages are very different. In mammals, we know that forebrain areas such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala play an important role in regulating the stress response, but we know very little about this in birds. This project will investigate how the avian hippocampus and amygdala coordinate the stress response in chickens. This project includes neuronal activity mapping using immediate early genes, tract tracing, and intervention experiments to understand the role of the avian hippocampus in regulating the stress response. This work will also link to other work from our laboratory showing that chronic stress reduces adult neurogenesis in the chicken hippocampus.k

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