NSF Award
0751613
Environmental challenges vary from stressful to life-threatening and animals must respond to them for survival. Typical defensive responses range from fear, which involves an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, to escape where muscles are prepared to help the animal run away from the threat. Humans produce similar responses to these challenging situations. The nervous system organizes the responses. When animals are faced with a threat nerves send messages to alert the brain, which in turn sends messages to the tissues and organs which need to respond. Nerve cells transfer information using chemicals called neurotransmitters and the researcher will look at how specific neurotransmitters interact at nerve junctions in the brain to produce the right defensive responses. To do this the researcher will use electrophysiological and neuropharmacological approaches. This study is important to help us understand nerve signal processing and could provide us with a mechanism that can be applied to many functions of the brain. This project will also provide training opportunities in physiology for undergraduate and graduate students, and presentations will be made at the elementary school level to encourage interest in science.
