Catalyzing Convergence Research on Health and Well-being Through a Bio3Science-Sustainability Framework
Melissa Gilbert - Chair and Professor, Geography and Urban Studies
Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities (CSC)
Principal Investigator
$102,879
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Addressing complex global problems – such as how dynamic processes in human and natural systems come to shape individual health and environmental integrity – requires robust research frameworks to guide research inquiry and generate actionable outcomes. The proposed project uses the Temple Made Bio3Science framework (connecting biology, biography, and biosphere) to develop a convergence science of health and well-being through conceptualizing sustainable regional systems. Harnessing Temple expertise in human and environmental geography, ecology, genetics, and health sciences, we will develop the first Bio3Science proof-of-concept using air quality in the urban Aburrá valley, housing the city of Medellin, Colombia, as a point of convergence to ask: how do proximal and telecoupled human and ecological interactions impact multi-scalar biosocial mechanisms associated with people’s health and well-being?
Urban residents in the Aburrá valley differentially experience daily air quality fluctuations and extremes, due to complex local and individual dynamics such as social and economic inequities, violent displacement, occupational choice, and inter-personal stress and wind patterns. While the details of this case are specific to this region, such interconnection among biological, biographic, and biospheric domains are globally relevant, illustrating the need for scientific convergence to understand complex relationships between environmental integrity and individual health. Therefore, our proof of concept will demonstrate the feasibility of building a Bio3Science process-model that is highly relevant to the cutting edge of both Sustainability Science and Rules of Life research.
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Delineating Cell-Specific Transcriptional Signatures of Early Life Stress in a Reward-Related Neural Networks
Mathieu Wimmer, Assistant Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience
Principal Investigator
$103,000
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Exposure to severe insults such as stress or trauma early in life is associated with higher risk for psychiatric diseases, including substance abuse and mood disorders. However, most individuals who experience adverse events early in life do not develop illnesses and some actually develop a level of protection as adults. This idea colloquially summed up as “what does not kill you only makes you stronger” is supported by extensive empirical evidence underpinning the “stress inoculation” hypothesis. This construct posits that stress that is not overwhelming experienced at early developmental milestones promotes resilience against mood disorders, improved arousal regulation and enhanced cognition in adulthood. Importantly, this phenomenon has been observed across species in pre-clinical models of early life stress and early life adversity ranging from rodents to non-human primates. Vulnerability and resilience to diseases states are influenced by the interaction between genetic and environmental factors that influence developmental trajectories and have long-term consequences for neural function in adulthood This has been historically a very difficult question to tackle in clinical populations due to the high costs of these studies and the complexity of these factors in humans. A better understanding of these processes holds the promise for improved therapeutics and interventions that could have a transformative impact on prevention, patient care and medicine. Moreover, this line of inquiry also necessitates the study of critical fundamental questions about the establishment and development of sex differences related to cognition, reward processing, stress response and mood. Overall, examining stress inoculation encompasses a broad scope of essential and highly translational questions that can be uniquely pursued by leveraging multifaceted experimental approaches.
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