Dr. Melissa Perreault, neuroscientist and professor at the University of Guelph, is breaking new ground by integrating Indigenous perspectives into neuroscience. In a Genomic Press Interview, she shares her personal and professional journey, exploring how her research on neuropsychiatric biomarkers, psychedelic medicine, and neuroethics can drive personalized treatments and create a more inclusive scientific future.

Kyoto, Japan -- Having one traumatic experience is bad enough. If you've constantly experienced stress since before birth, you may be in for an especially tough time. Our emotions may be influenced by infections experienced in the mother’s womb. This can result from two-hit stress, where an infection during pregnancy is followed by social stress during postpartum development.

A team of researchers at Kyoto University recently set out to understand the mechanisms behind which two-hit stress contributes to brain dysfunction and mental disorders. They conducted a comprehensive investigation of the social and cognitive behaviors of mice that have been exposed to such stress, paying particular attention to anxiety-like behaviors.

Previously, this team demonstrated that acute inflammation in the cerebellum caused by a bacterial infection induces neural plasticity, which in turn may lead to hyper-excitability in the brain and the onset of depressive and autism-like symptoms. Yet exactly how two-hit stress contributes to changes in the brain had remained unclear.

Black immigrant adults in the United States are more likely to be uninsured than their U.S.-born and non-Black immigrant counterparts, despite having the highest employment rates among the groups studied, according to new research from the Equity Research Institute (ERI) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.