Heidi Meyer

About Heidi Meyer
Dr. Meyer’s research is driven by a fascination with the uniqueness of the adolescent period, as more than a linear step in a progression from childhood to adulthood. Her research aims to address how behavioral patterns are learned based on an individual’s experience and current environment (including the ‘environment’ of adolescence). She completed her PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience, under the mentorship of Dr. David Bucci at Dartmouth College, studying the development (across adolescence) of behavioral inhibition in the face of appetitive cues. She then carried out a postdoc at Weill Cornell Medicine, working with Dr. Francis Lee, where her research was focused in the domain of fear and anxiety, exploring how adolescents learn to discriminate safety from potential danger, and how exposure to explicit safety signals may serve as a mechanism for reducing fear.

In January 2022 Meyer laboratory opened at Boston University in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Center for Systems Neuroscience. Research in Meyer lab uses behavioral, systems, and molecular neuroscience techniques to examine the cognitive and neurodevelopmental underpinnings of affective regulation. Projects take a multi-level approach to neuroscience, setting a solid foundation in learning theory and behavioral assays upon which to apply ever-advancing neuroscience techniques to address a critical gap in knowledge regarding the intersection between neural and affective regulation. Research is conducted with an eye for translation, striving to inform the causes and consequences of psychiatric illness, particularly that caused by deviations in brain development, leading to new avenues for treatment.

Watch Heidi Meyer’s NPC Symposium Talk Below

Interested in learning more? Check out the Q&A Session.

Using Calcium Imaging and Optogenetics to Shed Light on Dynamics of Fear Regulation in Adolescence and Adulthood
Fiber photometry is a method of in vivo calcium imagining that provides access to neural activity alongside real-time behavior with a millisecond timescale. Because this technique is viral in nature, it allows the isolation of specific neural circuits and cell types to achieve a fine-grained analysis of neural activity and a link between the brain and dynamic changes in behavioral responses to the surrounding environment. The Meyer lab uses fiber photometry to examine how mice respond to conditions of fear and safety. This method of neural imaging complements and informs optogenetic experiments aiming to elucidate the necessity of discrete neural circuits for fear regulation. In this talk, Heidi Meyer will discuss evidence that neurons within the ventral hippocampus that project to the prelimbic cortex, but not infralimbic cortex or basolateral amygdala, exhibit elevated activity during both safety recall and the conditioned inhibition of threat behavior, but lower activity during fear recall relative to safety. Furthermore,inhibition of prelimbic-projecting ventral hippocampal neurons disrupts fear regulation. These findings inform the role of the ventral hippocampus in the generation andinhibition of threat response patterns and indicate an extension of the role of ventral hippocampal modulation of prelimbic cortex to include the conditioned inhibition of fear. Notably, the neural correlates of fear regulation differ during development. Adolescent mice (29 daysold, corresponding to ~13 years in humans) can successfully use a learned safety signal to inhibit fear, and in some cases show an enhanced ability to do so relative to adults, possibly due to elevated neural activity inprelimbic-projecting ventral hippocampal neurons. This work elucidates the neural correlates of safety learning and emphasizes the potential to use safety signal-based treatments for anxiety during adolescence, a period when alternative treatments have limited efficacy. 

The Meyer Lab
Learn more about the Meyer Lab here.