Debra Bangasser
Professor Neuroscience- Education
Ph.D., 2007, Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University
M.S., 2005, Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University
B.A., 2001, Psychology, Minored in Biology, San Diego State University (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa)
- Specializations
Neuroendocrinology, Behavioral Neuroscience, Stress, Sex Differences, Early Life Adversity, Cognition, Motivated Behavior
- Biography
Dr. Debbie Bangasser is a Professor of Neuroscience, a Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator, and the Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. Dr. Bangasser is the Principal Investigator of the Neuroendocrinology and Behavior Laboratory, which investigates how stress across the lifespan alters vulnerability/resilience to substance use disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. Dr. Bangasser’s research program received the Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience, which recognizes originality and creativity in research, and an American Psychological Association Presidential Citation.
Dr. Bangasser has authored numerous publications in top journals including PNAS, Biological Psychiatry, and Nature Neuroscience. She is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Society for Neuroscience, the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. Her research is funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health. When not behind her computer, you can catch her taking photos of birds, dancing, playing cooperative board games, or scuba diving.
Research Interests
Dr. Bangasser’s Neuroendocrinology and Behavior lab investigates how stress across the lifespan alters the brain to increase the risk for substance use disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders. Ongoing projects in the laboratory investigate:
1) how early life adversity alters brain development to affect motivated behaviors, 2) the impact of postpartum resource scarcity on moms and infants, 3) sex differences in stress regulation of arousal and cognition, and 3) how changes in the early environment alter non-neuronal brain cells. We use preclinical models, translational behavioral tasks, neuroendocrine manipulations, circuit characterizing and manipulating techniques, multi-omics approaches, and cross-species comparisons to assess how stress causes sex-specific vulnerability and resilience to motivation and cognition from the molecular to behavioral level.
- Publications
Publications
- Deckers, C., Karbalaei, R., Miles, N.A. , Harder, E.V., Witt, E., Harris, E.P., Reissner, K., Wimmer, M .E., Bangasser, D.A. (2024). Early resource scarcity causes cortical astrocyte enlargement and sex-specific changes in the orbitofrontal cortex transcriptome in adult rats, Neurobiology of Stress, 29, 100607.
- Hodes, G.A.^, Bangasser, D.A., ^, Sotiropoulos, I., Kokras, N, & Dalla, C. (2024). Sex differences in stress response: classical mechanisms and beyond, Current Neuropharmacology, 22, 475–494. ^ = authors contributed equally
- Eck, S.R., Palmer, J., Bavley, C., Karbalaei, R., Ordoñes Sanchez, E., Flowers, J., Holley, A., Wimmer, M. & Bangasser, D.A. (2022). Effects of early life adversity on male reproductive behavior and the medial preoptic area transcriptome, Neuropsychopharmacology, 47, 1231–1239.
- Ordoñes Sanchez, E., Bavley, C., Deutschmann, A., Carpenter, R., Peterson, D., Karbalaei, R., Flowers, J., Rogers, C., Langrehr, M., Ardekani, C., Famularo, S., Bongiovanni, A.R., Knouse, M.C., Floresco, S.B., Briand, L.A., Wimmer, M.E., & Bangasser, D.A. (2021). Early life adversity promotes sex-specific resilience to opioid addiction-related phenotypes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118, 1–8.
- Eck, S. R., Xu, S., Telenson, A., Duggan, M.R., Cole, R., Wicks, B., Bergmann, J., Lefebo, H., Shore, M., Shepard, K.A., Akins, M.R., Parikh, V., Heller, E.A., & Bangasser, D.A. (2020). Stress regulation of sustained attention and the cholinergic attention system, Biological Psychiatry,88, 566–575. Chosen by the editor for a commentary.
- Wiersielis, K.R., Ceretti, A., Hall, A., Famularo, S., Salvatore, M., Ellis, A., Jang, H., Wimmer, M., & Bangasser, D.A. (2019). Sex differences in corticotropin releasing factor regulation of medial septum-mediated memory formation, Neurobiology of Stress, 10, 100150, 1–7.