Brian Trainor Email & Phone Number

We study the underlying neural mechanisms of social behaviors that are related to mental illness from a naturalistic perspective. We study a behavior called social vigilance, when a mouse avoids an unfamiliar individual but simultaneously orients towards this individual. In humans the combination of avoidance and vigilance is referred to as behavioral inhibition, a risk factor for anxiety disorders. We study the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, which controls social vigilance in mice and has been implicated in anxiety disorders in humans. We study monogamous California mice to investigate how social stress impacts neural circuits of social vigilance in males and females. We also study how adolescent development impacts this circuitry. The longer lifespan of California mice is characterized by a comparatively extended period of adolescent development compared to conventional laboratory rodent species.

Listed skills include Animal Models, Science, Experimental Design, Immunohistochemistry, and 14 others.