Catherine S. Woolley
Born (1965-07-30) July 30, 1965
Nelsonville, Ohio
Alma materRockefeller University, Texas A&M University
Known forNeurobiology and neurology
Scientific career
InstitutionsNorthwestern University, University of Washington
Doctoral advisorBruce McEwen

Catherine S. Woolley (born July 30, 1965) is an American neuroendocrinologist. Woolley holds the William Deering Chair in Biological Sciences in the Department of Neurobiology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, at Northwestern University.[1][2] She is also a member of the Women's Health Research Institute in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.[3]

Woolley studies cellular and molecular neuroscience in relation to the brain and behavior, particularly neuroendocrinology and the plasticity of neural circuits.[1] She attempts to understand molecular mechanisms of estrogen and its interactions with the structure and function of synapses in the adult brain, and their behavioral consequences.[4] She has been described as "a leading authority in a very exciting area of adult neuroplasticity".[5] Her earliest work included a pioneering study demonstrating that estrogen caused structural changes to cells in the rat hippocampus.[6] She has also shown that neuronal mechanisms in the rat brain differ in males and females. Her work has broad significance for drug development and women's health,[7] and for the studies of epilepsy,[8] anxiety[1][9] and depression.[10]

Early life

Catherine S. Woolley was born on July 30, 1965, in Nelsonville, Ohio. She graduated from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, with a B.Sc. honors in zoology[5] and was given a prize by the university for the best undergraduate honors thesis.[11]

Career

Woolley studied with Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, receiving her Ph.D. from Rockefeller in 1993.[2][12] She did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington with Philip Schwartzkroin in the Department of Neurological Surgery.[2]

In 1998, she became an assistant professor at Northwestern University in Evanston.[2] In 2013, Woolley was appointed to the William Deering Chair in Biological Sciences in the Department of Neurobiology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University.[1] She is the founding Director of Northwestern University's undergraduate Neuroscience program, and was named a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence by Northwestern in 2018 for "transforming the landscape of undergraduate education in Weinberg."[13]

She was elected to the Council of the Society for Neuroscience (2014–2018).[14] She is a senior editor of The Journal of Neuroscience.[15]

Research

Rockefeller University

Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University studies stress and its impact on the brain.[16] With McEwen, Woolley initially studied neuroleptics and their effects on proenkephalin mRNA levels.[5] Woolley went on to work with McEwen and Elizabeth Gould on a 1990 study that examined the brain using Golgi's method,[5][6][17] a technique first described by Camillo Golgi in 1873.[18] The study showed that estradiol increased the number and density of excitatory synapses of CA1 pyramidal cells in the rat hippocampus, as well as the density of dendritic spines. Both estradiol and spine density fluctuated dramatically during the estrous cycle.[5][6][17] Woolley recognized that this suggested that the adult brain was subject to change, at least in rats; this was surprising because it was accepted at that time that the adult brain was structurally stable.[5][12][16] Woolley's 1990 work is considered a pioneering study in hormones and synaptic plasticity.[6] Further work established that the manipulation of female sex hormones affects hippocampal structure in adult rats.[6][19]

University of Washington

Between 1993 and 1998, Woolley worked as a postdoc at the University of Washington in Seattle, with Philip Schwartzkroin. There she applied electrophysiology techniques and ultrastructural analysis to the study of hormonal effects in the brain.[5][20][21] She studied the effects of estrogen on the release of GABA in the hippocampus.[22] In 2000, she received the Cortical Explorer Award in recognition of her work on neuroanatomy and brain activity.[5]

"Catherine is finding the same neuronotrophic activation by steroids whether she uses Golgi staining to count spines or the electron microscope to visualize synapses. The methods are more sophisticated and powerful, but the basic observation is the same." Cortical Explorer Award, 2000[5]

Northwestern University

As a professor at Northwestern University, Woolley has done ongoing research into the sex-specific effects of estrogens, GABAA receptors, metabotropic glutamate receptors, and endogenous cannabinoids and their roles as neuromodulators of brain development and function.[23][24][25] In 2012, Woolley published research showing that estrogens had differential effects in the brains of female and male rats, decreasing inhibitory synaptic transmission in female rats but not in males.[3][26] In 2015, her group reported that male and female rats differ in the molecular pathways affected by endocannabinoids. In female rats the drug URB-597 increased the inhibitory effect of the endocannabinoid anandamide, lessening the release of neurotransmitters. In male rats, the drug had no effect. The interaction did not reflect circulating reproductive hormones.[3] Further research is needed to determine the extent to which rat neurology provides an accurate model for human neurology.[3][9]

While the significance of these results for humans are not yet demonstrated, rats are often used as a model for studying humans. An important implication of Woolley's research is that drug testing on males should not be assumed to yield results applicable to both males and females. To understand drug action, effects on both sexes should be studied.[3][7][9]

Awards and honors

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Catherine Woolley". Northwestern University. Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Brain Estrogens and Epilepsy: Evidence for latent sex differences in mechanisms of neuromodulation". Fralin Life Science Institute. Virginia Tech. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Another Difference Between The Sexes Uncovered, Northwestern University Reveals". Biospace. August 14, 2015. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
  4. 1 2 "NIH Director's Transformative Research Award Recipients 2016 Awardees". National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Azmitia, Efrain C. (2000). "Krieg Cortical Kudos 2000" (PDF). Cerebral Cortex. 10 (8): 826–828. doi:10.1093/cercor/10.8.826. PMID 10920054.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Garcia-Segura, Luis Miguel (May 5, 2009). Hormones and brain plasticity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195326611. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
  7. 1 2 Shah, Aparna (October 29, 2015). "Sex differences in preclinical neuroscience research: Snippets from #SfN15 with Catherine Woolley". PLOS Neuro Community. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  8. ↑ Paul, Marla. "Researcher Explores Estrogen's Effect on Seizures May 8, 2007". Northweastern News. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  9. 1 2 3 Shansky, Rebecca M.; Woolley, Catherine S. (23 November 2016). "Considering Sex as a Biological Variable Will Be Valuable for Neuroscience Research". The Journal of Neuroscience. 36 (47): 11817–11822. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1390-16.2016. PMC 5125240. PMID 27881768.
  10. ↑ Lambert, Kelly (2010). Lifting depression : a neuroscientist's hands-on approach to activating your brain's healing power. Basic Books. pp. 124–125. ISBN 978-0465018147. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  11. ↑ Stein, Anne (2014). "Staying in STEM Encouraging Women to Persist in Math and Science". Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  12. 1 2 Bear, Mark F.; Connors, Barry W.; Paradiso, Michael A., eds. (2007). "Sex and the brain". Neuroscience : exploring the brain (Fourth ed.). Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 555–558. ISBN 978-1451109542. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  13. 1 2 "2018 Recipients". Northwestern University. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  14. ↑ "Volunteer Leadership". Society for Neuroscience. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  15. ↑ "2018 Editorial Board". The Journal of Neuroscience. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  16. 1 2 McEwen, Robert (11 July 2017). "When is stress good for you?". AEON. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  17. 1 2 Woolley, CS; Gould, E; Frankfurt, M; McEwen, BS (December 1990). "Naturally occurring fluctuation in dendritic spine density on adult hippocampal pyramidal neurons". The Journal of Neuroscience. 10 (12): 4035–9. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.10-12-04035.1990. PMC 6570039. PMID 2269895.
  18. ↑ Finger, Stanley (1994). Origins of neuroscience : a history of explorations into brain function. Oxford University Press. p. 45. ISBN 9780195146943. OCLC 27151391. In 1873, Golgi published the first brief but "adequate" picture of la reazione nera (the black reaction), which showed the whole nerve cell, including its cell body, axon, and branching dendrites.
  19. ↑ Gould, Elizabeth; Woolley, Catherine S.; Frankfurt, Maya; McEwen, Bruce S. (1990). "Gonadal Steroids Regulate Dendritic Spine Density in Hippocampal Pyramidal Cells in Adulthood" (PDF). The Journal of Neuroscience. 10 (4): 1286–1291. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.10-04-01286.1990. PMC 6570209. PMID 2329377. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  20. ↑ Woolley, CS (1999). "Electrophysiological and cellular effects of estrogen on neuronal function". Critical Reviews in Neurobiology. 13 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1615/CritRevNeurobiol.v13.i1.10. PMID 10223521.
  21. ↑ Stafstrom, Carl E. (December 2013). "Issues in Clinical Epileptology: A View from the Bench. A Festschrift in Honor of Philip A. Schwartzkroin, PhD". Epilepsy Currents. 13 (6): 291–296. doi:10.5698/1535-7597-13.6.291. PMC 3854749. PMID 24348132.
  22. ↑ Etgen, Anne M.; Pfaff, Donald W. (2009). Molecular mechanisms of hormone actions on behavior. Elsevier/Academic Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0123749390.
  23. ↑ Galanopoulou, Aristea S. (May 2013). "Stirring the Pot With Estrogens". Epilepsy Currents. 13 (3): 129–131. doi:10.5698/1535-7511-13.3.129. PMC 3697880. PMID 23840172.
  24. ↑ Spencer, Joanna L.; Waters, Elizabeth M.; Romeo, Russell D.; Wood, Gwendolyn E.; Milner, Teresa A.; McEwen, Bruce S. (May 2008). "Uncovering the mechanisms of estrogen effects on hippocampal function". Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology. 29 (2): 219–237. doi:10.1016/j.yfrne.2007.08.006. PMC 2440702. PMID 18078984.
  25. ↑ Wissman, Anne Marie; May, Renee M.; Woolley, Catherine S. (11 October 2011). "Ultrastructural analysis of sex differences in nucleus accumbens synaptic connectivity". Brain Structure and Function. 217 (2): 181–190. doi:10.1007/s00429-011-0353-6. PMC 3275686. PMID 21987050.
  26. ↑ Huang, Guang Zhe; Woolley, Catherine S. (June 2012). "Estradiol Acutely Suppresses Inhibition in the Hippocampus through a Sex-Specific Endocannabinoid and mGluR-Dependent Mechanism". Neuron. 74 (5): 801–808. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2012.03.035. PMC 3372866. PMID 22681685.
  27. ↑ "Keck Foundation Announces Completion of Distinguished Young Scholars Program". Philanthropy News Digest. December 24, 2009. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  28. ↑ "Past & Current award Winners". American Association of Anatomists. Archived from the original on 14 July 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  29. ↑ "Fellows & Scholars". Northwestern University. 2014-12-19. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  30. ↑ "Faculty Honors and Awards". Northwestern University. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  31. ↑ "Catherine Woolley: Department of Neurobiology - Northwestern University". www.neurobiology.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2019-09-07.
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