The Neurodevelopment of Stress Regulation, Social Buffering and Fear Learning: Integration and Crosstalk

The burden of stress and fear of threats to our well-being are parts of modern society that sap productivity and induce mental and physical diseases. The child is particularly hard hit by stress and fear because it can change the actual structure of the brain and produce strong vulnerability to crime, addiction and pathology later in life. Recent research suggest that social support can greatly reduce stress and fear by suppressing the physiological effects of stress, but also by actually preventing some of the brain's response to fear and stress. This ability of social cues to prevent the brains's immediate and enduring response to stress and fear is most pronounced in children and the caregiver is most effective in influencing the impact of stress. Thus, understanding mechanism of the physiology of stress, the psychology of fear and its rescue by caregivers and romantic partners (called social buffering) is critical for developing social policies and interventions to support child development and life long wellbeing. Significant advances in this area can be made via improved communication between researchers who typically work separately due to historical reason. Dr. Megan Gunnar at the University of Minnesota will lead a steering committee consisting of leading scientists from several disciplines to conduct a series of three workshops to break down barriers and unite researchers across previously disparate disciplines to transform our current understanding of the neurobiology of fear. This workshop series will bring together researchers from the behavioral sciences (social, cognitive, and developmental sciences), biological sciences (neurophysiology, neuroendocrinology, neuroimaging), as well as researchers involved in the development of new technologies and computational modeling (engineering and mathematics) to generate innovative ideas and transformative projects to significantly advance our understanding of fear and its management by social context. Such advance is expected to have broader societal impact by informing policy making and by suggesting effective behavioral methods and technological supports for reducing stress and fear.

Specifically, this workshop series aims to break down disciplinary boundaries and historical norms to address the problem of how fear is acquired and controlled by social stimuli throughout all stages of development across life span and across different species (humans and non-human animals) and what neural mechanisms underlie these psychological, social, and developmental processes. The aim for the first year is to develop a platform for dialogue among researchers from behavior, brain science, computational scientists, and engineers to develop a shared vision to tackle this grant challenge for society. We will assess recent development in nanotechnology that can transform the way scientists observe and measure stress related behavioral and psychological changes and the way biological scientists to obtain neural and physiological indices of stress regulation. The outcome of the first workshop will be a joint vision statement in a high profile journal and joint selection of major research themes for subsequent workshops' scientific sessions and methodological tutorials. The aim of the second and third years will be systematically transforming this shared vision (in terms of major thematic areas) into concrete collaborative projects and conduct pilot studies and identifying major technological, scientific, and organization challenges and considerations of possible solutions, and actively involving postdoc and graduate students in creating sustainable training plan for interdisciplinary research across the newly expanded collaborating research communities. While the focus of the second year will be on developing pilot studies and coordinated effort in obtaining funding to support the jointly developed projects, the focus of the third year will be on developing long-term training mechanisms to support the newly formed community. The final outcome of this workshop series will be the development of large-scale and cross-cutting collaborative project proposals, possibly international, that link multiple research centers within the US and on the global scale.