The molecular basis of emotional learning is a rapidly evolving research topic that has crucial implications for the treatment of a variety of mental conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. While there is a general understanding of the neurotransmitter systems and brain regions involved in mediating symptoms of these disorders, there is still rather little known about the molecular mediators of emotional learning. This is an important deficit because a better understand of the discrete biological processes involved in problem such as fear conditioning and stress effects on learning and memory could lead to novel therapeutic strategies that will be discovered because of new research into these basic brain mechanisms. The University of Washington has a number of investigators in several departments that are studying several aspects of emotional learning and stress effects on cognition and behavior. We propose to launch a search to recruit a new Investigator at the Rank of Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology to use cutting edge molecular strategies to study the fundamental neural processes that underlie emotional learning. A number of potential technical strategies would meet this expection, such as proteomics, FRET, two photon microscopy, etc, but the search is intended to be open to considering other novel strategies that can be brought to bear on the topic of emotional learning. We expect the new investigator to be an expert in a new technological strategy that will provide synergistic energy to current research efforts at the University of Washington, and that mutually enrichment of the current institutional environment will lead to the development of an exciting new investigator and enhanced research in the laboratories of existing investigators. The new Investigator would join a distinguished Department containing a number of experts in molecular pharmacology, with special emphasis on signal transduction research, and a broader ensemble of behavioral neuroscientists from several departments who are already highly interactive with each other. We expect further collaborative interactions within our institution and between institutions to develop through this recruitment and its related activities.
Emotional learning involves the cognitive and biological processes involved in making associations and developing learned patterns of behavior that are associated with mental conditions associated with fear, depression, stress, and trauma. Identifying specific molecular mechanism associated with emotional learning may identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention in afflicted individuals.
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