Publications by Olivia Zanoletti

Corticotropin-releasing hormone modulates NREM sleep consolidation through the thalamic reticular nucleus

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Simone Astori

Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) is a peptide associated with stress and anxiety that acts as a potent modulator throughout the nervous system. The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) displays high expression of the CRH receptor 1 (CRHR1), but whether CR ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2025

Mitochondrial control of ciliary gene expression and structure in striatal neurons

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Dogukan Hazar Ülgen, Alessandro Chioino

Mitochondria play essential metabolic roles and are increasingly understood to interact with other organelles, influencing cellular function and disease. Primary cilia, as sensory and signalling organelles, are crucial for neuronal communication and functi ...

WILEY2025

Urolithin A abolishes high anxiety and rescues the associated mitochondria-related transcriptomic signatures and synaptic function

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Dogukan Hazar Ülgen, Davide D'Amico, Simone Astori

Background: Chronic anxiety is common, disabling, and often refractory to current therapies. Mounting evidence implicates mitochondrial abnormalities in anxiety-related phenotypes. Urolithin A (UA), a gut microbiota-derived metabolite known to enhance mito ...

Elsevier BV2025

Diurnal cortisol profiles in autistic adolescents and young adults: Associations with social difficulties and internalizing mental health symptoms

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti

Several autism-related characteristics, such as social difficulties, may contribute to high perceived stress and increased exposure to stressful life events in some autistic individuals. Repeated exposure to stress might lead to the dysfunction of the hypo ...

2024

Mitofusin-2 in nucleus accumbens D2-MSNs regulates social dominance and neuronal function

Bernard Schneider, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Elias Georges Gebara, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Simone Astori, Sriparna Ghosal, Eva Ramos Fernandez, Alessandro Chioino

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a brain hub regulating motivated behaviors, including social competitiveness. Mitochondrial function in the NAc links anxiety with social competitiveness, and the mitochondrial fusion protein mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) in NAc neurons ...

2023

Blunted Glucocorticoid Responsiveness to Stress Causes Behavioral and Biological Alterations That Lead to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Vulnerability

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Sophie Elizabeth Walker, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Simone Astori, Silvia Monari

Background: Understanding why only a subset of trauma-exposed individuals develop posttraumatic stress disorder is critical for advancing clinical strategies. A few behavioral (deficits in fear extinction) and biological (blunted glucocorticoid levels, sma ...

2023

Glutathione in the nucleus accumbens regulates motivation to exert reward-incentivized effort

Pascal Steiner, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Lijing Xin, Olivia Zanoletti, Fiona Hollis, Alina Veronika Irene Strasser, Ioannis Zalachoras, Simone Astori, João Pedro de Matos Rodrigues, Eva Ramos Fernandez

Emerging evidence is implicating mitochondrial function and metabolism in the nucleus accumbens in motivated performance. However, the brain is vulnerable to excessive oxidative insults resulting from neurometabolic processes, and whether antioxidant level ...

2022

Deletion of Crtc1 leads to hippocampal neuroenergetic impairments associated with depressive-like behavior

Bernard Lanz, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Rolf Gruetter, Carole Poitry-Yamate, Antoine Timothée Cherix, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse

Mood disorders (MD) are a major burden on society as their biology remains poorly understood, challenging both diagnosis and therapy. Among many observed biological dysfunctions, homeostatic dysregulation, such as metabolic syndrome (MeS), shows considerab ...

SPRINGERNATURE2022

Exploring associations between diurnal cortisol, stress, coping and psychopathology in adolescents and young adults with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Maude Schneider, Farnaz Delavari

Background: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a neurogenetic condition associated to a high risk for psychiatric disorders, including psychosis. Individuals with 22q11DS are thought to experience increased levels of chronic stress, which could lead to ...

2022

Opposite effects of stress on effortful motivation in high and low anxiety are mediated by CRHR1 in the VTA

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Ioannis Zalachoras, Simone Astori, Mandy Meijer

Individuals frequently differ in their behavioral and cognitive responses to stress. However, whether motivation is differently affected by acute stress in different individuals remains to be established. By exploiting natural variation in trait anxiety in ...

2022

eNAMPT actions through nucleus accumbens NAD + /SIRT1 link increased adiposity with sociability deficits programmed by peripuberty stress

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Johan Auwerx, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Wei Huang, Laia Morato Fornaguera, Ioannis Zalachoras, Simone Astori, João Pedro de Matos Rodrigues, Sriparna Ghosal, Lei Cao

Obesity is frequently associated with impairments in the social domain, and stress at puberty can lead to long-lasting changes in visceral fat deposition and in social behaviors. However, whether stress-induced changes in adipose tissue can affect fat-to-b ...

2022

Early life adoption shows rearing environment supersedes transgenerational effects of paternal stress on aggressive temperament in the offspring

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Guillaume Poirier, Olivia Zanoletti, Sonakshi Gupta

Prenatal experience and transgenerational influences are increasingly recognized as critical for defining the socio-emotional system, through the development of social competences and of their underlying neural circuitries. Here, we used an established rat ...

2021

LPA1 receptor and chronic stress: Effects on behaviour and the genes involved in the hippocampal excitatory/inhibitory balance

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Alexandre Claude Gustave Bacq, Roman Moreno Fernandez

The LPA1 receptor, one of the six characterized G protein-coupled receptors (LPA1–6) through which lysophosphatidic acid acts, is likely involved in promoting normal emotional behaviours. Current data suggest that the LPA-LPA1-receptor pathway may be invol ...

2020

The glucocorticoid receptor in the nucleus accumbens plays a crucial role in social rank attainment in rodents

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Fiona Hollis, Alexandre Claude Gustave Bacq, Ioannis Zalachoras, Thomas Didier Larrieu, Meltem Weger

Social hierarchy in social species is usually established through competitive encounters with conspecifics. It determines the access to limited resources and, thus, leads to reduced fights among individuals within a group. Despite the known importance of s ...

2020

Peripubertal stress-induced heightened aggression: modulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in the central amygdala and normalization by mifepristone treatment

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Stamatina Tzanoulinou, Vandana Veenit, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Orbicia Riccio Wicht

Despite the enormous negative impact of excessive aggression for individuals and societies, there is a paucity of treatments. Here, using a peripubertal stress model of heightened aggression in rats, we investigated the involvement of the glucocorticoid sy ...

2019

Diazepam actions in the VTA enhance social dominance and mitochondrial function in the nucleus accumbens by activation of accumbal dopamine D1 receptors

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Carlos Canto Alvarez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Michael van der Kooij, Fiona Hollis, Laura Lozano Montes, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Ioannis Zalachoras, Sonia Abad Florensa

Benzodiazepines can ameliorate social disturbances and increase social competition, particularly in high-anxious individuals. However, the neural circuits and mechanisms underlying benzodiazepines’ effects in social competition are not understood. Convergi ...

Nature Publishing Group2018

Increased brain glucocorticoid actions following social defeat in rats facilitates the long-term establishment of social subordination

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Meltem Weger

Social rank is frequently established through aggressive encounters between new conspecifics. Despite increasing evidence suggesting that social rank is critical for the well-being of both humans and animals, knowledge about the factors influencing social ...

2018

Peripubertal stress increases play fighting at adolescence and modulates nucleus accumbens CB1 receptor expression and mitochondrial function in the amygdala

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse

Play fighting is a highly rewarding behavior that helps individuals to develop social skills. Early-life stress has been shown to alter play fighting in rats and hamsters as well as to increase aggressive behaviors at adulthood. However, it is not known wh ...

2018

Amygdala GluN2B-NMDAR dysfunction is critical in abnormal aggression of neurodevelopmental origin induced by St8sia2 deficiency

Graham Knott, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Elias Georges Gebara, Wei Tang, Alexandre Claude Gustave Bacq, Johannes Gräff, Catherine Maclachlan, Jose Vicente Sanchez Mut, Bianca Ambrogina Silva, Simone Astori

Aggression is frequently observed in neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder. Due to a lack of understanding of its underlying mechanisms, effective treatments for abnormal aggression are still missing. ...

2020

Constitutive differences in habituation of the glucocorticoid response to stress are related to variation in aggression and anxiety-related behaviors

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Sophie Elizabeth Walker, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut

Glucocorticoids coordinate responses that enable an individual to cope with stressful challenges and, additionally, mediate adaptation following cessation of a stressor. There are important individual differences in the magnitude of glucocorticoid responsi ...

2017