Beyond the Paper: A Conversation with Kathleen Bryant

Interviewed by Dr. Paige N. McKeon, July 31, 2023

In their publication, Bryant and colleagues investigated unknowns pertaining to long-term motivational changes in mice that occur following repeated exposure to low doses of alcohol. Focusing on the ventral hippocampus, a brain region strongly associated with reward-related behaviors, they utilized in vivo electrophysiology to discover that low-doses of alcohol significantly shift the role of the hippocampus in reward seeking. These findings critically advance our understanding of the brain’s sensitivity to alcohol.

"Research had always existed in my head as some magical feat, and it wasn’t on my radar at all as a potential career option. As my research experience grew, and I had key discussions with my mentor, being a researcher became a tangible and viable career option for myself."

Kathleen Bryant, PhD.

We want to hear a little about you! Congratulations on your recent graduation and on your postdoctoral position at Indiana University Alcohol Research Center. What drew you to pursue alcohol research? What are your personal research goals?

Thank you! I have always been interested in science and curious about how things worked. What intrigued me the most about the brain was how much there is left to discover. As I learned more about the brain, I wanted to know what underlying processes drove individuals to make certain decisions. Alcohol research was one of the first things I was drawn to as my mother unfortunately was a victim of alcohol use disorder. I wanted to explore and gain a better understanding of what may drive certain decision processes in the context of alcohol use. My personal research goals are to continue investigating how alcohol use alters decision-making, with the ultimate goal of running my own lab and being a part of academic administration. I come from a low socioeconomic status, and having people who were willing to give me the support I needed leading up to and during graduate school was so important to my success. I want to be that person for the next generation, and ultimately be in a position of power to make larger changes at the institutional level.

You are an SfN Neuroscience Scholar’s Program (NSP) associate – congratulations on this accomplishment, as well. How has your experience been in NSP? What are the strengths of the program and in what ways can it improved?

Thank you! I am about to start my second year as an associate and so far I have loved the program! I really enjoy the frequent Zoom meet-ups, and the presentations they host with experts across all aspects of research. I wish there were more opportunities to interact with just the other associates and fellows in the program, since the only time we get to really meet together is in-person at SfN [Annual Meeting]. But overall it has been a fantastic program and a great resource for help and support. I highly recommend it!

What are your career goals and how have your lab and research experiences shaped these goals? What advice do you have for young research investigators?

My career goals are to one day run my own lab as a principal investigator and be a part of academic administration. My goals have been shaped a lot by my lab and research experiences. When I first started volunteering in lab as an undergraduate, I didn’t even know what research was, or what getting a PhD looked like. Research had always existed in my head as some magical feat, and it wasn’t on my radar at all as a potential career option. As my research experience grew, and I had key discussions with my mentor, being a researcher became a tangible and viable career option for myself. I have been very lucky to have such great mentors and supporters, but I have so many friends and peers who do/did not. I want everyone to have the same opportunities in science, and so I want to be in a position to give those to people and support/advocate for them at the institutional level. My advice to young research investigators is to trust yourself and always do what is best for you and your needs. When you are in the thick of it, each application, or proposal, or experiment can seem so important, but it is never worth the detriment of your long-term mental health and wellbeing.

Did the outcomes of the experiments in this paper surprise you? Did you run into any challenges along the way?

They definitely were surprising! We had some idea going into this project of what the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) may be doing in this task, but we really had no idea how this would be altered by repeated low-dose alcohol exposure, due to the minimal research that has been conducted at low doses. Originally, we hypothesized that low-dose alcohol would alter the magnitude of vHPC activity around behavioral events, but that really wasn’t the case at all. Instead, we saw specific shifts in activity around reward seeking. Then, we thought since vHPC activity was shifted, maybe this shift was critical for the ethanol-induced increases in reward seeking that we observed. However, inhibiting vHPC activity in ethanol-exposed mice did absolutely nothing. So, while very little of this was expected, we still discovered that even low doses of alcohol produce long-term changes in behavior and alter the function of vHPC in reward seeking. Sometimes the unexpected results are the most interesting though, and we have lots of thoughts and plans on how to explore the questions raised by these findings in the future!

Can you describe why the specific methods were chosen to address your questions? Had this been your first time using these methods?

We wanted to interrogate the changes in vHPC activity in awake behaving animals, and one of the best ways to do that is with in vivo electrophysiology. This technique also lets you look not just at population level activity, but also individual neuron activity, though we don’t do that analysis here. Since we got such temporally restricted changes with the electrophysiological data, it made sense to then manipulate with the closed-loop optogenetics, as that gives use tighter temporal control as compared to other manipulation methods such as chemogenetics. I had not used either of these techniques prior to this experiment, so it was a learning experience.

In your view, what is/are the most valuable contribution(s) of this paper to the field?

In my view, the biggest one is the long-term effects of repeated low-dose alcohol exposure on reward seeking and neurobiology that we find. In the alcohol field, we are so used to thinking about alcohol effects in the context of high, binge-level doses that I think we forget that low doses are biologically relevant as well. This is one of the first studies that really investigated this and demonstrated that even low doses can produce long-lasting effects on the brain and behavior. I think this paper also adds to the growing literature identifying vHPC as a region that is susceptible to alcohol exposure, and makes the case that it should be studied more in the context of alcohol use in the future.

You have been an author on publications at a variety of journals, how did you feel about the eNeuro review process in comparison to other journals? As a follow-up, how was your experience with the review process in your successful pursuit of an NRSA? Taking all these experiences together, how do you feel about the science review process in general?

The eNeuro review process was straightforward, and surprisingly speedy. Going through the peer review process and refining my manuscripts has definitely been important for helping me refine my experiments, but also making me a better writer for submitting grants, such as my NRSA. I know there is a lot of discussion on the review process and while it may not be a perfect system, and some changes are certainly needed, I don’t think it is beyond saving. I think most of the people who are a part of the review process are genuinely in it for the right reasons, and that has also been my experience as an author thus far.

Are there any projects you are currently working on that you would like to give readers a heads up about? What should we keep a look out for?

I'm working on manuscripts now which further explore the effects of low-dose alcohol on behavioral flexibility and neural circuit engagement and how different behavioral processes can overlap and be related – stay tuned!

Dr. Kathleen Bryant has a science twitter if you would like to connect: @katiegbry
To follow up with the Barker lab, you can visit their website: jbarkerlab.com

Read the full article:

A History of Low-Dose Ethanol Shifts the Role of Ventral Hippocampus during Reward Seeking in Male Mice
Kathleen G. Bryant, Mitchell A. Nothem, Lauren A. Buck, Binay Singh, Sana Amin, Christina M. Curran-Alfaro, and Jacqueline M. Barker