Hormones & Behavior Core

Hormones & Behavior Core (Core C) Summary The goals of the parent Program Project are to investigate possible mechanistic determinants of reduced estradiol efficacy on female cognitive aging under pathological conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity. In order to assess mechanisms by which estradiol’s switch from beneficial for cognitive function to neutral or even detrimental may occur, the projects in this proposal will investigate cognitive function in aging female rodents under varying conditions of cardiometabolic health and disease both with and without estradiol treatment. Core C (Hormones & Behavior Core) will facilitate this work and contribute to the success of the overall Program Project through the completion of two specific aims. Aim 1 will establish a rodent model of menopause and hormone therapy that is uniform across all four projects, and Aim 2 will enhance rigor and reproducibility by standardizing the behavioral tests and assessments used across studies. Core services within a program project are advantageous compared to independent investigations as they allow for careful planning and coordination of research design, disease models, and data collection and analysis among all projects which would otherwise prove difficult for researchers with separate grants at separate institutions. This coordination will significantly impact the scope of the research by eliminating project-specific variability in biological age, timelines, dietary components, and disease models and thus permitting inferences between studies that could otherwise never be made.