Dr. Adrienne Antonson

Biography

Adrienne M. Antonson is an Assistant Professor in the Animal Sciences department at the University of Illinois. Her research focuses on the neuroimmunology of behavior and the neural and genomic bases of behavior. Utilizing translational animal models, she investigates how inflammatory neurodevelopmental origins can lead to behavioral abnormalities and mental health disorders. Her studies focus on the prenatal period, a critical developmental window, where she has demonstrated that maternal insults from viral infections and psychological stress during pregnancy can alter the neuroimmune signatures in the offspring's brain, resulting in disrupted behaviors. Dr. Antonson's key research focuses on how exogenous and endogenous signals derived from prenatal maternal immune activation can shift the function of fetal microglial cells, which are resident brain macrophages, thereby disrupting neurodevelopment. Additionally, her work hypothesizes that downstream perturbations in the maternal microbiome may propagate harmful inflammatory signaling that contributes to the disruption of immune balance at the maternal-fetal interface.

Research Interests

Experience