FABBS is delighted to highlight the exceptional work of young scholars. The FABBS Undergraduate Research Excellence Award acknowledges and honors undergraduate student investigators who have conducted research of superior quality with broader societal impact. The opportunity to nominate students for these awards is offered to our Departmental and Division Affiliates.
We are excited to introduce Daniella Ludmir, the recipient of our 2024- 2025 Undergraduate Research Excellence Award for her project “Hormonal contraceptives prevent stress enhancement of fear memory via blunted stress responsivity.”
Q: Please provide a brief introduction about yourself.
My name is Daniella Ludmir, and I was born and raised in Miami, FL. I recently graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience. I began working as a research assistant in my sophomore year in Dr. Natalie Tronson’s lab under the mentorship of Kristen Schuh. In this role, we studied the effects of hormonal contraceptives and how they impact stress, anxiety, and depression-like behaviors.
Q: Tell us about your research project.
Dr. Tronson’s research found that in male mice, previous stress exposure increases freezing levels during contextual fear conditioning. Before beginning my own project, I replicated this experiment in female mice to confirm we observed the same effect. Then, we introduced the variable of hormonal contraceptives (HCs) to examine whether HCs alter the behavioral outcome seen by stress enhanced fear conditioning since HCs blunt corticosterone levels in response to acute stress.
Our results showed that animals exposed to both acute stress and HCs did not significantly differ in percent freezing from HC-treated animals that were not stressed. However, non-HC animals exposed to acute stress displayed significantly higher freezing levels than non-HC animals not exposed to stress. These findings suggest that HCs interact with the stress response, altering an animal’s ability to adequately respond to fear after acute stress.
Q: What inspired your interest in this topic?
I joined the Tronson Lab because I am passionate about women’s health and neuroscience, and I was particularly fascinated by the lab’s work on how oral contraceptives affect the brain. I have always enjoyed reading scientific papers and writing, so I knew early on that I wanted to complete a senior honors thesis and lead a project of my own.
Within the lab, some projects focused on stress and fear conditioning, while others examined how hormonal contraceptives influence stress, anxiety, and depression-like behaviors. When discussing potential thesis ideas with Dr. Tronson, I wanted to combine these two areas of research. Prior work shows that stress enhances fear conditioning, and our lab has also found that stress-induced corticosterone release is blunted by HCs. I wanted to see if this blunting had a protective or detrimental effect on context fear conditioning.
Q: This award recognizes the broader impact of your research project. What are the societal implications of your work?
Hormonal contraceptives are the most widely used method of birth control in the United States, however research on their potential side effects, particularly related to mood and mental health, remains limited and often inconsistent. Globally, up to 30 million women report adverse mood effects as a side effect, which is the leading cause for discontinuation. This research can help expand access to HCs by guiding physicians to make more informed prescribing decisions, support the development of contraceptive options with fewer negative side effects, and ultimately ensure that hormonal contraceptives remain both accessible and tolerable for as many users as possible.
Q: What are your next steps academically/professionally?
I recently started a PhD program at the University of Miami in their program in biomedical sciences!
