Rate My Professor Elizabeth Holly

Holly's research examines the systems neuroscience of stress and motivated behavior using rodent models to uncover neural circuits underlying decision-making and their disruption by stress. Her ongoing projects, supported by an NIH K01 Career Development Award, investigate the consequences of adolescent social isolation on adult value-based decisions and striatal dopamine circuits. She also received the Young Investigator Award from the Tourette Association of America for studies on decision-making and sensory processing challenges in Tourette Syndrome. Key publications include "Ventral tegmental area dopamine revisited: effects of acute and repeated stress" (Psychopharmacology, 2016), "Sex differences in behavioral and neural cross-sensitization and escalated cocaine taking as a result of episodic social defeat stress in rats" (Psychopharmacology, 2012), "Social stress and CRF–dopamine interactions in the VTA: role in long-term escalation of cocaine self-administration" (Journal of Neuroscience, 2014), "Increased mesocorticolimbic dopamine during acute and repeated social defeat stress: modulation by corticotropin releasing factor receptors in the ventral tegmental area" (Psychopharmacology, 2015), and "Striatal low-threshold spiking interneurons regulate goal-directed learning" (Neuron, 2019). Her work has advanced insights into stress-related vulnerabilities in addiction and psychiatric disorders.