Wednesday, March 4, 2026
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Foege South Auditorium (Genome Sciences) & Zoom Webinar

Neural Codes of Arousal:  The Locus Coeruleus and Anxiety

The locus coeruleus (LC) is a central neuromodulatory hub that produces a large majority of the brain’s norepinephrine (noradrenaline).  The LC is known to powerfully shapes arousal, stress responses, and adaptive behavior. Dysregulation of LC function has long been implicated in anxiety and trauma-related disorders, yet the circuit mechanisms by which LC activity produces distinct behavioral states have remained unclear. In this lecture, I will present a body of work from our laboratory over the past decade that reframes the LC not as a unitary arousal system, but as a structured network capable of encoding distinct arousal states through projection-specific activity patterns and local circuit modulation. I will discuss how peri-locus coeruleus (peri-LC) circuits gate LC output, biasing neural codes toward transient versus persistent arousal and shaping avoidance-related behaviors under stress. Using recent rodent models with cutting-edge systems neuroscience methods, including advances in imaging, circuit dissection and neural decoding, I will illustrate how maladaptive LC coding may contribute to features of pathological anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, such as hyperarousal and persistent avoidance. Together, these studies provide a mechanistic framework for understanding how neuromodulatory circuits generate innate behavior, how they adapt, and how the brains adrenergic system contributes to maladaptive behavioral states.  The translational implications for these studies will aide in developing more targeted treatments for anxiety and trauma-related disorders.

About the Speaker

Michael R. Bruchas, PhD
Professor
Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction, Pain, and Emotion
Professor of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine and Pharmacology
University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Michael received his BS in biology and his PhD in pharmacology from Creighton University in 2004 and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at the University of Washington, where he examined how endogenous opioids impact stress, depression, and addiction. Dr. Bruchas’s laboratory focuses on how brain circuits are wired, how they communicate via GPCR – mediated neuromodulation, and to develop new neuroscience tools to aide in that process.  His laboratory’s discoveries have been published in Nature, Science, Cell, and Nature Neuroscience, Neuron and have been featured on Public Radio, in The Wall Street Journal, Nature, NBC News, The New Yorker, The Smithsonian, and Popular Science along with many international popular science publications.  He has awards including the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, an NIH EUREKA Award, the Young Investigator Award from the International Narcotics Research Conference, and multiple NIH BRAIN Initiatives for tool development in dissecting brain circuits.  In 2018, he was awarded the NIH-MERIT award from NIDA, the Rising Star Award from the Mahoney Institute of Neuroscience, and the SfN – Jacob P. Waletzky Memorial Award for cutting-edge research in addiction.  Dr. Bruchas is also a co-founder of a neurotechnology company Neurolux.  Dr. Bruchas resides with his wife and daughter in Fremont (Seattle) and loves travel, food, craft beer and wine, all types of music, books, the outdoors, and cycling.