Vicarious stress occurs when witnessing others undergo trauma and can be modeled in rodents. Prior stressor experience in witnesses may be required to enhance vicarious stress. Most studies utilize adult animals however less is known about vicarious stress in juveniles. We explored and compared the behavioural effects of vicarious stress and prior stressor experience in juvenile and adult female rats. Four witness groups were included: Control (no experience, no vicarious stress), Context (experience, no vicarious stress), Naive (no experience, vicarious stress), and Experienced (experience, vicarious stress). Experienced and Context groups were subjected to ten 1.0 mA footshocks over 12 minutes. On the next day, Naive and Experienced groups watched their cagemate endure footshocks from a perforated transparent barrier. Control and Context groups watched the cagemate roam freely. Fear expression was measured 24hrs after and social interactions and acoustic startle response were recorded. There were no age differences in Experienced groups which had greater fear expression during the vicarious stressor. Adult Experienced groups had greater fear expression after 24 hours compared to juveniles. There were no effects of vicarious stress and experience on the social interactions and acoustic startle response, yet juvenile rats spent more time interacting and had a larger startle response. In sum, prior stressor exposure was required for vicarious stress to increase fear expression acutely in adult and juvenile female rats yet led to unchanged behavioural responses.

Exploring the effects of prior stressor experience and vicarious stress in juvenile and adult female rats

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Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

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Exploring the effects of prior stressor experience and vicarious stress in juvenile and adult female rats

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