Professor
Associate Director for University of Cincinnati Gardner Neuroscience Inst.
Department Chair & Flor van Maanen Endowed Chair
Pharmacology & Systems Physiology
College of Medicine
University of Cincinnati
DR. JAMES HERMAN earned his B.S. in Chemistry/Psychology at Hobart College and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1987, from the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy. Dr. Herman was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan. He began his career in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Kentucky, where he was an Assoicate Professor and the James and Barbara Holsinger Chair of Anatomy and Neurobiology. Dr. Herman joined the University of Cincinnati faculty in 2000 and is currently the Director of the Laboratory of Stress Neurobiology, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, and Director of the Center for Basic Neuroscience Research. Dr. Herman's major research interests include structural, functional and molecular biological principles underlying brain stress integration and pathology.
Research Description
The brain is at the center of a complex physiological process orchestrating secretion of stress hormones. Integration of the stress response occurs by way of a defined array of central stress-integrative neurons, which initiate a neuroendocrine cascade resulting in steroid secretion by the adrenal glands. Dr. Herman's laboratory is geared toward examining the relationship between the physiological actions of central nervous system stress circuits and their place in the central nervous system. Present studies focus on: 1) limbic system regulation of the stress response and, consequently, on the generation of stress-related disorders, ranging from major depressive illness to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to essential hypertension to neurodegeneration and aging, and 2) defining the role of central adrenocorticosteroid receptors in transducing stress-related signals in normal physiology, aging and disease states. Experimental approaches include genomic methods to discovery of novel genes and microRNAs involved in stress integration; use of gene knockdown and gain-of-function methods (conditional knockout/transgenic mice and viral vectors) to assess the role of specific molecular species in stress regulation and pathology; and combinations of in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry and tract-tracing for establishing the biochemical signatures of defined circuits within the brain-stress axis.
