Maureen Fitzgerald

TL;DR: Exogenous leptin signaling in the hypothalamus restrains the overconsumption of calorically dense foods and the consequent increase in body mass, whereas leptin action in the midbrain regulates effort-based responding for food rewards and mesolimbic dopamine tone.

TL;DR: The data suggest that chronic stress increases synaptic inhibition onto prefrontal glutamatergic output neurons, limiting the influence of the prefrontal cortex in control of stress reactivity and behavior.

TL;DR: It is reported that central injection of agouti-related peptide attenuates the acquisition of a conditioned place preference for sucrose, but not high fat diet, suggesting that the melanocortin system is capable of regulating mesolimbic activity and food seeking behavior.

TL;DR: The utility of this conditional knockdown rat to afford high-precision knockdown of GR across a variety of contexts, ranging from neuronal depletion to circuit-wide manipulations, leveraging the behavioral tractability and enhanced brain size of the rat as a model organism is supported.

TL;DR: The data suggest that adolescent stress differentially affects emotional behavior and circuit development in males and females, and that GR manipulation during stress can reverse at least some of these effects.