Early Career Keynote
Early Career Keynote address
Polymnia Georgiou, PhD
From Reward to Sleep: ERβ Regulation of Neural Circuits Underlying Stress Resilience
Stress is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders, yet considerable individual variability exists in susceptibility and resilience. Increasing evidence suggest that neuroendocrine mechanisms play a critical role in determining how the brain adapts to stress, but the specific pathways mediating resilience remain poorly understood. In this presentation, I will discuss our work identifying estrogen receptor β (ERβ) signaling as a key regulator of stress resilience across multiple behavioral and neural domains. Using multidisciplinary approaches including genetic models, pharmacology, circuit dissection, electrophysiology, fiber photometry, optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations, we have investigated how estradiol and ERβ signaling influence stress-induced alterations in reward processing, sleep, and circadian function. Our studies reveal that loss of ERβ signaling increases susceptibility to stress-induced maladaptive behaviors, whereas ERβ activation promotes resilience. We identified a previously unrecognized basolateral amygdala-to-nucleus accumbens ERβ circuit that regulates reward processing in males and demonstrated that estradiol-dependent signaling within this pathway protects against stress-induced social and motivational deficits. In parallel, we found that disruption of ERβ signaling impairs sleep architecture, alters circadian regulation, and exacerbates stress-induced behavioral dysfunction, while pharmacological activation of ERβ mitigates these effects. Together, these findings support a model in which ERβ functions as a central neuroendocrine mechanism coordinating stress adaptation across reward, sleep, and circadian systems. By integrating circuit-level and behavioral analyses, this work provides new insight into the biological basis of stress resilience and highlights ERβ signaling as a promising therapeutic target for neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by disturbances in motivation, affect, sleep, and circadian rhythms.
Biography
Dr. Polymnia Georgiou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She holds a PhD from the University of Surrey, UK, and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Her research uses preclinical models to examine the pathophysiology of mental disorders tied to dysregulation of the brain reward system, such as drug addiction and mood disorders. She focuses on how hormones, including oxytocin, corticotropin-releasing factor, and estradiol, shape these disorders and the neurobiology behind them. Her long-term goal is to learn whether hormone replacement therapies, or manipulating these systems, can work as antidepressant and relapse-preventive treatments. Her lab combines behavioral, genetic, pharmacological, cellular/molecular, and systems neuroscience approaches.
Her work has appeared in leading journals including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuropsychopharmacology, and Molecular Psychiatry. She has made important contributions to understanding how estrogen receptors shape vulnerability to stress, including work showing that estradiol acting through estrogen receptor β (ERβ) mediates stress susceptibility in the male and female brain. Her research also showed that both the sex of the experimenter and mild stress can modulate mouse behavior and neural responses to ketamine, findings with implications for the reproducibility of preclinical research and for adjunctive antidepressant treatments. Together, this work helps explain why mood and addiction disorders can differ by sex and hormonal state, and it points toward more personalized treatments.
Career Workshop - Science Communication: Ryan Martin, PhD
Taking Your Work Online: The Pros and Cons of Public Scholarship
In 2021, I wrote a book and decided to try promoting it on TikTok. That decision ended up shifting the future of my scholarship in significant ways, both good and bad. In this discussion, I want to talk through the tools and techniques around public scholarship (i.e., academic research and teaching shared with non-academic audiences). We'll discuss the arguments for and against such work, especially when it's done on social media, and we'll talk about the ways it can help or potentially hinder your career.
LinkTree : AngerProfessor Official: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Twitter | Linktree