Name:
Tessa Douma
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Section Behavioural phenotyping and genomics
Function:
PhD-student
E-mail:
t.n.douma@uu.nl Tel: +31 6 16342380
Supervisor:
Dr. L. Groenink
Title research:
CRF, stress and psychosis
Summary research:
Psychosis is a syndrome (i.e. mixture of symptoms) associated with many psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, mania and depression. Stress exposure is thought to trigger or exacerbate psychotic symptoms in constitutionally vulnerable individuals. However, the neural mechanisms involved remain to be elucidated. Hyper(re)activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis – a neural system that is fundamental to the mammalian stress response – has been implicated in psychotic disorders. Recent evidence from both patients and animal models suggests that the neuropeptide corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) may play an important role in the expression of psychotic symptoms. Transgenic mice that express high levels of CRF show deficits in sensory gating – i.e. filtering of sensory information, which is also impaired in psychotic disorders. Moreover, the sensory gating deficits in mice are reversed by antipsychotic drugs.
The overall goal of my project is to unravel the link between CRF, stress and psychosis. As a behavioural tool, sensorimotor gating deficits in CRF transgenic mice are studied, next to drug-induced disruptions of sensorimotor gating in wild-type mice. To get more insight in the mechanisms underlying CRF-induced behavioural deficits, interactions with other neurotransmitter systems (i.e. dopamine, glutamate, GABA) as well as other HPA modulators will be studied. For a closer look, pharmacological studies will be extended with molecular techniques, such as microdialysis and PCR.