Rosemary C. Bagot

Research Areas:

Behavioural Neuroscience

Research Summary:

Dr. Bagot’s research focuses on the mechanisms of altered brain circuit function in depression. Epidemiological studies highlight the importance of stress in the etiology of depression. However, not all people who experience stress become depressed. Uncovering the brain circuit changes and behavioural characteristics associated with increased stress susceptibility is key to understanding differences in resilience and susceptibility to depression. Dr. Bagot’s research employs a multi-disciplinary approach integrating in vitro electrophysiology, in vivo optogenetics, in vivo calcium imaging and next-generation sequencing in robust mouse behavioural models to elucidate the brain circuit changes that drive maladaptive behaviours and the underlying gene expression networks that mediate altered circuit function.

Selected References:

Peña, C.J., Nestler, E.J., & Bagot, R.C. Environmental programming of susceptibility and resilience in adulthood in male mice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Published online March 1st 2019.

Muir, J., Lopez, J., & Bagot, R.C. (2019). Wiring the depressed brain: Optogenetic and chemogenetic circuit interrogation in animal models of depression. Neuropsychopharmacology. 44(6): 1013-1026.

Muir, J., Lorsch, Z.S., Ramakrishnan, C., Deisseroth, K., Nestler, E.J., Calipari, E.S., & Bagot, R.C. (2018). In vivo fiber photometry reveals signature of future stress susceptibility in nucleus accumbens. Neuropsychopharmacology. 43(2):255-263.

Bagot, R.C., Cates, H.M., Purushothaman, I., Vialou, V., Heller, E.A., Yieh, L., LaBonté, B., Peña, C.J., Shen, L., Wittenberg, G.M. & Nestler, E.J. (2017). Ketamine and imipramine reverse transcriptional signatures of susceptibility and induce resilience-specific gene expression profiles. Biological Psychiatry. 81 (4): 285-295.

Bagot, R.C., Cates, H.M., Purushothaman, I., Lorsch, Z.L., Walker, D.M., Wang, J., Huang. X., Schlüter, O., Maze, S., Peña, C.J., Heller, E.A., Issler, O., Wang, M, Song, W., Stein, J.L., Liu, X.C., Doyle, M.A., Scobie, K.N., Sun, H.S., Neve, R.L., Geschwind, D., Dong, Y., Shen, L., Zhang, B., & Nestler, E.J. (2016) Circuit-wide transcriptional profiling reveals region-specific gene networks regulating depression susceptibility. Neuron. 90(5): 969-83

Bagot, R.C., Parise, E.M., Peña, C.J., Zhang, H.X., Maze, I., Chaudhury, D.C. Persaud, B., Cachope, R., Bolaños, C.A., Cheer, J., Deisseroth, K., Han, M.H., & Nestler, E.J. (2015). Ventral hippocampal afferents to the nucleus accumbens regulate susceptibility to depression-like behavior. Nature Communications. 6: 7062.