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Darlene Francis Assistant Professor Ph.D., McGill University
Joint appointment with the School of Public Health The bidirectional relationship between biology and psychology (biopsychology) is fascinating! Research interests and "big-picture" questions of our laboratory concern the interplay between the environment and neurobiology. Many of my published papers demonstrate that if you change environment, you change behavior, via changes in neurobiology. Conversely, changes in neurobiology lead to changes in behavior. To study these relationships in a clinical or human setting becomes extremely difficult and limiting. To demonstrate causality with respect to these relationships, we employ animal models (in our case, rats and mice) to begin to deconstruct the nature of these interactions. For example, using animal models, we can demonstrate that the given early environment of an organism can "program" the brain for later life, and this programming can be transmitted intergenerationally! We can ask (and answer) fundamental questions concerning the relationship between genes and the environment at multiple levels: behaviorally, hormonally, neurobiologically, genetically. Most importantly, we can begin to integrate all of this information. Selected Publications Francis, D.D., Szegda, K., Campbell, G., Martin, W.D. and Insel, T.R. (2003) Epigenetic sources of behavioral differences in mice. Nature Neuroscience, 6 (5): 445-446. Francis, D.D., Diorio, J., Plotsky, P.M. and Meaney, M.J. (2002) Environmental enrichment reverses the effects of maternal separation on stress reactivity. Journal of Neuroscience, 22 (8): 7840-7843. Francis, D.D., Caldji, C., Champagne, F., Plotsky, P.M. and Meaney, M.J. (1999) The role of corticotropin-releasing factor - norepinepherine systems in mediating the effects of early experience on the development of behavioral and endocrine responses to stress. Biological Psychiatry, 46(9):1153-1166. Francis, D.D., Diorio, J., Liu, D. and Meaney, M.J. (1999) Variations in maternal care form the basis for a non-genomic mechanism of inter-generational transmission of individual differences in behavioral and endocrine responses to stress. Science, 286(5442):1155-8. Francis, D.D. and Meaney, M.J. (1999) Maternal care and the development of stress responses. Curr Opin Neurobiol, 9, 128-134.
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