Mentor: Chandrashekhar Borkar, Ph.D.

Adaptive defensive responses are essential for survival, allowing organisms to respond rapidly to potential threats. However, when these responses become dysregulated, particularly following trauma, they can manifest as persistent and maladaptive behaviors characteristic of disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the United States, anxiety-related disorders affect a substantial portion of the population, highlighting the need to better understand how traumatic experiences alter behavioral regulation .

A central feature of PTSD is not simply heightened fear, but a disruption in how defensive behaviors are selected and expressed. Rather than flexibly transitioning between responses such as freezing, flight, or aggression based on context, individuals may exhibit rigid or exaggerated behavioral patterns following trauma exposure.

This study investigates how an acute trauma paradigm influences defensive behavior selection in mice. By comparing trauma-exposed animals to controls that undergo identical conditioning without additional stress, we isolate how trauma reshapes behavioral responses to threat. This behavioral framework provides a foundation for understanding how traumatic experiences bias defensive strategies, a hallmark feature of PTSD.

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