Lizette Herrera-Portillo

Stress is a major risk factor for depression. Despite the marked sex differences in depression, neurobiological mechanisms underlying vulnerability in each sex remain unclear. Here, we examine dose-dependent adaptations to chronic variable stress in behavior, physiology, and brain structure and function in male and female mice. Using normative modeling, we identified distinct, duration-dependent neuroanatomical adaptations to stress at both the group- and individual-level. Resting-state fMRI revealed shared and sex-specific spatial reorganization of brain networks. Multivariate analyses revealed continuous axes of brain-behavior covariation that capture both dose- and threshold-dependent adaptations to chronic stress. Together, this work demonstrates that biological sex shapes dose-dependent adaptations to stress across multiple levels of brain and behaviour.

Lizette is currently a PhD candidate in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience (IPN) at McGill. Her research is focused on investigating the role of sex in stress vulnerability using mouse models and neuroimaging. The goal of her work is to characterize stress-induced adaptations in each sex, and their association to depressive- and anxiety-like behaviour, in an effort to better understand mechanisms of depression.

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