Noëmie Mermet-Joret receives an LF Experiment Grant
DANDRITE Assistant Professor Noëmie Mermet-Joret is among 25 research daredevils to receive an amount of 2 million DKK to further develop her study in the amygdala. Her project investigates if hard-wired circuitry in the amygdala provides the scaffolding for rapid learning of aversive experiences.
"The aim of our project is to understand why learning threat signals is so fast, efficient and long-lasting. We have been showing in our lab that the amygdala - besides fear conditioning - is also required for the processing of innate aversive threat signals. This grant offers me and our lab the possibility to expand our technical skills. If we succeed, we will have the possibility to correlate the identity of single cells located in deep brain structures to their activity in-vivo, which represents a big step in the field of neuroscience,” says Noëmie.
She will be trained at Boston University to adapt a new technology (CRACK), in order to see the molecular identity of the neurons involved in innate and learned threat processing and if/how these markers evolve between before and after learning.
If the project is successful, the next step will be to study how the relation between innate and learned circuits interaction is altered in adverse conditions, especially in chronic/repeated stress.
Congratulations Noëmie!