Current Research Interests/Projects:

Challenges and life events can overwhelm an individual's coping resources. The outcomes resulting from failures to cope can be measured in physiological, behavioral, emotional terms. Using a multidisciplinary, multidimensional approach the Stress and Motivated Behavior Institute (SMBI) seeks to understand the nature of stressors (characteristics of environmental challenges that deplete an individual's coping resources), the neurobiology that underlies the development of stress states both transient and persistent, the capacity of individuals to cope, and development of methodologies to enhance coping abilities under extreme stressors to minimize long term deleterious consequences. Current topics include: development of anxiety and depression after exposure to traumatic stressors in male and female rats, learning in human females as a function of their menstrual cycle, susceptibility to environmental hazards (chemical and directed energies), and the basis for unexplained illness.

Recent Publications:

Beck,K.D., Brennan,F.X., Moldow,R.L., Ottenweller,J.E., Zhu,G., & Servatius,R.J. Stress interacts with peripheral cholinesterase inhibitors to cause central nervous system effects. Life Sci, 73(1):41-51; 5-23-2003 .

Beck,K.D. & Servatius,R.J. Stress and cytokine effects on learning: what does sex have to do with it? Integr Physiol Behav Sci, 38(3):179-188; 2003.

Servatius,R.J. & Beck,K.D. Facilitated acquisition of the classically conditioned eyeblink response in male rats after systemic IL-1beta. Integr Physiol Behav Sci, 38(3):169-178; 2003.