Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow
SKILLS
FULL DESCRIPTION
Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow
Research opportunity for a postdoctoral clinical fellow in Jonny Kohl’s lab at [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal], focusing on hormonal regulation of stress circuits during pregnancy.
Project Description
We are seeking a clinician scientist interested in understanding how pregnancy-related hormonal changes reshape brain circuits that regulate stress. Pregnancy and the postpartum period are associated with marked changes in stress responsiveness and represent a time of increased vulnerability to mood and anxiety disorders. However, the neural circuit mechanisms through which pregnancy hormones act on the stress circuits remain poorly defined.
This project will use mouse models to examine how hormones such as estradiol and progesterone alter the activity and connectivity of hypothalamic circuits involved in stress regulation during pregnancy and after birth. By combining behavioural assays with in vivo miniature two-photon calcium imaging and ex vivo slice electrophysiology, we will investigate how hormonal state transitions modify neural dynamics, synaptic inputs, and intrinsic neuronal properties. The goal is to identify cellular and circuit-level mechanisms that link endocrine changes to behavioural adaptation, providing insights relevant to the neurobiology of perinatal mental health disorders.
Lab
Jonny Kohl, Senior Group Leader, State-Dependent Neural Processing Laboratory, [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal].