Biomedical sciences professor receives $2.4 million NIH grant award to study treatments for stress-related neuropsychiatric conditions

Health Sciences

Biomedical sciences professor receives $2.4 million NIH grant award to study treatments for stress-related neuropsychiatric conditions

Neuropsychiatric conditions such as major depressive disorder feature inability to adapt behavior for a changing environment

Dr. Matthew Hearing, associate professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Health Sciences, has been awarded an R01 grant worth $2.42 million from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health to develop more effective approaches for treating a range of debilitating stress-related neuropsychiatric illnesses.

Deficits in cognitive flexibility are evident in many stress-associated neuropsychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder. Such deficits are often debilitating and may manifest as ineffective problem-solving abilities, as well as negative thought patterns that come at the expense of healthy coping responses.

"Flexible behavior - the ability to adapt behavior in response to changing environmental contingencies - is a critical component of everyday life," Hearing said. "Our preliminary findings indicate that prolonged exposure to unpredictable psychosocial stress produces deficits in strategy shifting, or 'cognitive flexibility in mice,' akin to those observed in people with major depressive disorder. Interestingly, similar to human populations, not all mice exhibit deficits in flexibility, which may help to identify risk factors related to individual susceptibility versus resilience to stress."

Hearing and his team will test the hypothesis that chronic unpredictable stress produces sex-dependent neurological changes that result in deficits in behavioral/cognitive flexibility, and that this reflects impaired function of areas of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex. Researchers have observed an upregulation of the stress-responsive protein, REDD1, in this region of the brain following unpredictable stress - a phenomenon also observed postmortem in individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder - and that its overexpression produces multiple deficits, including in the ability to be adaptive in processing information.

"This is an exciting opportunity for Dr. Hearing and his team to expand on their groundbreaking neuroscientific research on mechanisms underlying mental disorders," said Dr. William E. Cullinan, dean of the College of Health Sciences. "This particular approach has strong implications for understanding and treating a range of debilitating stress-related neuropsychiatric conditions."

Hearing is a principal investigator on this award along with Dr. John Mantsch, Florence J. Williams Professor and Chair of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Medical College of Wisconsin. The researchers previously received an R01 award or their neuroscientific study on substance use disorder in women when they were colleagues at Marquette.

The NIH's Research Project Grant (R01) is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by the agency. The R01 provides support for health-related research and development based on the mission.

The National Institute of Mental Health is the lead federal agency for research on mental disorder. Its mission is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery and cure.

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