Professor Wilbrecht's essay, Your Twelve-Year-Old Isn't Just Sprouting New Hair but Is Also Forming (and Being Formed by) New Neural Connections, appears in Think Tank: Forty Neuroscientists Explore the Biological Roots of Human Experience (David J. Linden, ed. 2018).
This review summarizes the case for investing in adolescence as a period of rapid growth, learning, adaptation, and formational neurobiological development. Adolescence is a dynamic maturational period during which young lives can pivot rapidly—in both negative and positive directions. Scientific progress in understanding adolescent development provides actionable insights into windows of opportunity during which policies can have a positive impact on developmental trajectories relating to health, education, and social and economic success. Given current global changes and challenges that affect adolescents, there is a compelling need to leverage these advances in developmental science to inform strategic investments in adolescent health. Ronald E. Dahl, Nicholas B. Allen, Linda Wilbrecht & Ahna Ballonoff Suleiman, Importance of investing in adolescence from a developmental science
Age, sex, and gonadal hormones differently influence anxiety- and depression-related behavior during puberty in mice
Anxiety and depression symptoms increase dramatically during adolescence, with girls showing a steeper increase than boys after puberty onset. The timing of the onset of this sex bias led us to hypothesize that ovarian hormones contribute to depression and anxiety during puberty. In humans, it is difficult to disentangle direct effects of gonadal hormones from social and environmental factors that interact with pubertal development to influence mental health. To test the role of gonadal hormones in anxiety- and depression-related behavior during puberty, we manipulated gonadal hormones in mice while controlling social and environmental factors. Similar to humans, we find that mice show an increase in depression-related behavior from pre-pubertal to late-pubertal ages, but this increase is not dependent on gonadal
Ovarian Hormones Organize the Maturation of Inhibitory Neurotransmission in the Frontal Cortex at Puberty Onset in Female Mice
The frontal cortex matures late in development, showing dramatic changes after puberty onset, yet few experiments have directly tested the role of pubertal hormones in cortical maturation. One mechanism thought to play a primary role in regulating the maturation of the neocortex is an increase in inhibitory neurotransmission, which alters the balance of excitation and inhibition. We hypothesized that pubertal hormones could regulate maturation of the frontal cortex by this mechanism. Here, we report that manipulations of gonadal hormones do significantly alter the maturation of inhibitory neurotransmission in the cingulate region of the mouse medial frontal cortex, an associative region that matures during the pubertal transition and is implicated in decision making, learning, and psychopathology. We find that inhibitory neurotransmission,
Undergraduate awards: Ben Hoshal won an MCB poster award and Nana Okada won a Psychology poster award. Congratulations to Ben and Nana!