Project Grant R01MH136502

This federal Project Grant award (R01MH136502) for $816,063 from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), under the CFDA 93.242 Mental Health Research Grants program, supports research to understand how neural representations of social information, such as social rank, influence motivated behavior and emotional responses.

The research will be conducted by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, a private university and non-profit organization with extensive federal grant and contract experience. The study aims to elucidate the role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) neural circuit in mediating motivated behaviors in response to social odor cues from dominant and submissive mice. Behavioral assays, physiological recordings, and neural manipulations will be employed to trace how sensory processing of social rank information converges onto circuits driving motivated actions. The findings are expected to inform future research on neural mechanisms underlying social and emotional dysfunction in psychiatric disorders.