Stanford Psychiatry’s Neir Eshel Awarded Grant Examining Serotonergic Modulation of Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviors

We are pleased to announce that Stanford Psychiatry’s Neir Eshel, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, has received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to examine serotonergic modulation of aggressive and prosocial behaviors.

Although foundational work has revealed neural populations in the amygdala, hypothalamus, and brainstem that are necessary to trigger aggressive behavior, the upstream circuits that modulate this behavior depending on context are less understood. This research aims to remedy gaps in literature by exploring the possible mechanistic links between aggression and its counterpart: prosocial, affiliative behavior. The study team will combine neural recordings and optogenetic manipulations to discover how serotonin and its target neurons in the striatum adapt to control aggressive or prosocial behavior depending on environmental context. 

Findings from this research have the potential to resolve longstanding debates over the role of serotonin in social behavior, introduce new methods to resolve the timing and cellular mediators of neuromodulator action, and discover the neural circuits that link reward omission (frustration) with aggression. Ultimately, the findings are intended to help identify more precise treatments for individuals who display harmful aggressive behavior by harnessing circuit and molecular specificity.

“Uncontrolled aggression is a major public health concern, but treatment options remain inadequate,” says Dr. Eshel. “In this project, we will combine brain imaging and manipulation techniques to uncover how serotonin modulates aggressive behavior, with the long-term goal of developing more effective treatments for patients across multiple neuropsychiatric disorders.”

Dr. Eshel leads the Stanford Translational Addiction and Aggression Research Lab, using cutting-edge neuroscience and computational tools to understand how the brain controls motivated behavior, and how this process might go wrong in psychiatric disease. Recent publications related to this work include “Striatal dopamine integrates cost, benefit, and motivation” in the journal Neuron, and “Opponent control of reinforcement by striatal dopamine and serotonin” published in the journal Nature.

More Information

Read more details about the project on NIH RePORTER.