Rate My Professor Mick Watt

Among his notable publications are 'Sex differences in the effects of mild traumatic brain injury and progesterone treatment on anxiety-like behavior and fear conditioning in rats' (2023), 'GABAA Receptor and Serotonin Transporter Expression Changes Dissociate Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Influence of Sex and Estrus Cycle Phase in Rats' (2023), 'Chronic administration of glucocorticoid receptor ligands increases anxiety-like behavior and selectively increases serotonin transporters in the ventral hippocampus' (2022), 'Prenatal exposure to alcohol impairs responses of cerebral arterioles to activation of potassium channels: Role of oxidative stress' (2022), 'Enhanced dopamine D2 autoreceptor function in the adult prefrontal cortex contributes to dopamine hypoactivity following adolescent social stress' (2018), and 'Impact of juvenile chronic stress on adult cortico-accumbal function: Implications for cognition and addiction' (2017). These works explore mechanisms such as social defeat stress effects on monoamines and anxiety, sex-specific brain injury responses, glucocorticoid modulation of serotonin systems, and vascular changes from prenatal alcohol exposure. At the University of Otago, Watt supervises summer research scholarships, including projects on inflammation and anxiety links, and engages in outreach through the NZ Brain Bee Challenge and neuroscience demonstrations at public events. In 2019, he delivered a departmental seminar titled 'Far-reaching consequences of adolescent social stress on brain and behaviour'.