By Caroline Turner, Gabby Valle

Faculty Mentor: Parrish Waters

Abstract

Social stressors compromise the most intense stressors that animals face. We have developed a novel model called the ‘social stress choice paradigm’ that allows us to better explore social stress in laboratory mice. In this study, we will assess the effects of this
paradigm on hormonal and brain dopamine systems, to expand our understanding of social stress and improve our ability to treat human stress related disorders.