Brain Matters

WHAT IS THE FOCUS OF YOUR RESEARCH?

My work is all in animals, looking at basic brain mechanisms for how we learn about emotional/traumatic events and how we can suppress those memories. I’m really interested in basic questions about the organization of the biology and the neurobiology of the brain circuits that perform functions related to emotions, memory, and so forth, and how these findings translate to the clinic.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE BRAIN WHEN SOMEONE EXPERIENCES TRAUMA?

Traumatic experiences cause a host of changes in the brain, some of which persist for hours, and others that persist for months or even years. Long-lasting changes include hyperactivity in the amygdala—an area of the brain involved in fear—and decreases in the activity of the prefrontal cortex—an area involved with emotional regulation.

HOW DOES YOUR RESEARCH HELP THOSE WITH TRAUMA-RELATED DISORDERS?

Current therapies for anxiety disorders and PTSD focus on learning that cues associated with the trauma are no longer fear-provoking—they’re safe. My work is geared toward understanding how the brain remembers and learns about traumatic events, and then how we can target those brain areas and circuits to facilitate suppression of fear when it becomes pathological, as it is with PTSD.

The major questions my colleagues and I have been studying during the last 10 years concern the mechanisms in the brain that account for fear reduction. Our work has shown that the stress associated with a traumatic experience disrupts the prefrontal cortex. When the prefrontal cortex is stressed, procedures routinely used to suppress fear memories, such as exposure therapy, tend to be ineffective. We’re learning that the behavioral processes that dampen fear can be enhanced by juicing up certain pharmacological neurotransmitter systems in the brain circuits we’ve identified so that we can make it work better with drugs. This pharmacotherapeutic approach seems to have quite a bit of promise in terms of providing optimal therapies.

WHY IS YOUR RESEARCH IMPORTANT?

PTSD is a major debilitating disorder that affects an increasing number of people in the U.S. With depression, obsessive compulsive disorder or other mental illnesses, you don’t really know when the disorder begins. With PTSD, however, you have a moment in time where there’s a particularly traumatic event. Because we know when PTSD starts, we can model that traumatic experience very effectively in the lab using basic learning and memory procedures. This means you can go from laboratory work to the clinic and make substantial progress. The hope is that what we learn in basic animal work translates to humans and that we can develop better therapeutic interventions.

Support Brain Science at Texas A&M

“Whether it’s mental health, mental illness, or neurological disorders and neurodegeneration, brain disorders touch almost everyone: Even if you’re not personally afflicted, you likely have a family member or friend who is,” said Maren.

Texas A&M’s Brain Science Initiative brings together faculty and student researchers to see the brain in action, offering a more thorough understanding of how people think, feel and interact. Trained in cutting-edge techniques for neuroimaging and psychophysiological measurements, researchers from colleges across Texas A&M seek answers to everything from obsessive-compulsive disorder to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Gifts to the Brain Science Initiative can not only pay for expensive imaging equipment, but can also provide the personnel needed to lay the groundwork for federal funding of brain science research. Gifts likewise bolster the “discovery and innovation” pillar of Texas A&M University’s Lead by Example capital campaign. This impact area focuses on enhancing the ability of university researchers to answer some of the most pressing global issues facing 21st century society—including those related to mental health.

With a long tradition of research involving both humans and animals, Maren said Texas A&M is “uniquely positioned to seek answers to brain science questions.”