BBRF’s grant for Liam Barry-Carroll and Ourania Semelidou

Liam Barry-Carroll, post-doctoral researcher at NutriNeuro, and Ourania Semelidou, post-doctoral researcher at NeuroCentre Magendie, were awarded the 2024 NARSAD young investigator grant from the Brain & Behaviour Research Foundation (formerly known as the NARSAD).

Liam Barry-Carroll

Liam Barry-Carroll works in the team NutriMind, under the mentorship of Jean-Christophe Delpech and Charlotte Madore.

His project

His project is titled “Unravelling the role of microglia-derived extracellular vesicles in early life stress” and will run for 2 years.

Early life stress (ELS) has been widely implicated in the development of psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Numerous studies have underscored the deleterious effects of ELS on neurodevelopment and susceptibility to psychiatric disorders with emerging evidence suggesting a pivotal role of microglia, the resident immune cells of the central nervous system, in mediating these effects. Here we aim to explore the impact of early life stressors on the emergence of PTSD, focusing on limited bedding as a model of ELS in rodents. Our preliminary data from ELS mice indicates significant alterations in the homeostatic phenotype of microglia and changes in the expression of genes related to extracellular vesicle (EV) content, biogenesis and release suggesting a potential role of microglia-derived EVs in mediating the effects of ELS. Building upon these findings, our study aims to elucidate the role of microglia-derived EVs in ELS-induced neurological disturbances. Leveraging established protocols for EV isolation and analysis, we will characterize the content of microglia-derived EVs in ELS mice and explore their interactions with other microglia and neuronal cells using complementary in vitro models. This research has significant implications for understanding the pathophysiology of PTSD and other stress-related disorders and offers insights into potential therapeutic targets and interventions aimed at mitigating the long-term consequences of early life adversity on neurodevelopment and mental health outcomes. Overall, I will continue to build on the groundwork that has been established since beginning my postdoc as part of the ExoMarquAge chaire under the mentorship of Jean-Christophe Delpech and Charlotte Madore.  

Ourania Semelidou

Continuing the work she started on tactile perception as an FRM postdoctoral fellow, in the next two years Ourania Semelidou will be conducting her research in the team “Cortical Plasticity”, co-mentored for this project by Andreas Frick and Anna Beyeler, at the Neurocentre Magendie.

Her project:

Her project, titled “Attentional Control of Social Touch in Social Anxiety Disorder”, aims to broaden our understanding of social touch processing and attentional control in social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a chronic psychiatric disorder, characterized by excessive and persistent fear of possible negative evaluation by others during social interactions, which often leads to social avoidance and withdrawal. Touch is a very important form of social interaction, reported altered in social anxious individuals who do not seem to profit from its advantages. However, even though a dislike for social touch has been reported by socially anxious individuals, neural responses to touch and the attentional processes necessary to filter this information when it becomes irrelevant have not been studied. Ourania’s project aims to characterize social and non-social tactile perception and its attentional control in social anxiety disorder, at the behavioral and neuronal level. To this end, Ourania will employ a mouse model of SAD and combine a novel tactile decision-making task with 2-photon microscopy in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). This is the first study to characterize the neural correlates of social touch alterations in SAD, using a translational task that can be modified and employed in human studies for objective measurements of tactile responses in socially anxious individuals.

Building on her previous work, the BBRF Young Investigator Grant will enable Ourania to further advance her research and support her transition toward an independent research career.