On aging, memory, fear, and an unexpected life in science

PBS Assistant Professor Sydney Trask.

Newly appointed PBS assistant professor Sydney Trask did not always plan to become a scientist. She began her undergraduate education at Kent State University in Ohio seeking to avoid the required science or math course at all costs. “I was a journalism major, and I thought, ‘Why would I need that?’” she says.

To her relief, she discovered that in lieu of math, she could take a philosophy course on basic logic. Much to her surprise, however, she found the class with its arguments and syllogisms riveting and had a real knack for the work and the kind of systematic thinking it required. Seeing her interest, the professor steered her toward another course, this time a psychology class on learning theory. It was a notoriously hard class on basic behavioral experimental designs, how to test hypotheses, and how to apply different mathematical models to come up with behavioral predictions. Again, it clicked. And this time the professor asked her to join his lab, which she agreed to do. “I was an unhappy journalism major taking truly random classes,” she recalls. What did she have to lose?

Her first day in the lab was not exactly promising. Handling rats was so terrifying to her that she left early, unsure if she could return. But the next day she summoned up the courage to see the commitment through. In the coming weeks she came to love the work she was doing and at that point, she says, “I changed my major to psychology, decided I wanted to go to graduate school, and signed up for a bunch of neuroscience classes.”

“The neuroscience of aging” F100 initiative

Following graduate school at the University of Vermont and post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, she landed her first job as a faculty member at Purdue University. Then came the job announcement for her current position, part of the Faculty 100 Initiative to develop faculty strengths in different areas, in this case the Neuroscience of Aging and Central Nervous System Disease, and the nature of a position defined by its collaborative potential, had a great appeal.

This past December, she and her husband moved to Bloomington with their four-month-old son and two big dogs in tow. Trask is now putting the finishing touches on her lab, where she will continue to pursue research on age-related changes in memory function, particularly with respect to memory retrieval and cognitive flexibility.

As she explains it, “I’m interested in changes that occur in the molecular processes that precipitate protein accumulation. If we can intervene in these processes during middle age, maybe we can prevent age-related cognitive decline.”

Humans, for example, instead of showing a linear decline in cognitive function throughout the lifespan, typically show a precipitous decline starting around age 65. And yet, she states, “not everybody shows the same trajectory,” an aspect in which she is “super-interested.”

Trask points out that students are often drawn to the study of age-related memory decline. But the other critical part of this work is learning. Basic learning processes and how they change with age are an integral part of memory-related research. “You can’t have learning, if you don’t have memory. And I think really to understand how learning and memory change with age, you have to understand first how they function at baseline.”

I’m interested in changes that occur in the molecular processes that precipitate protein accumulation. If we can intervene in these processes during middle age, maybe we can prevent age-related cognitive decline.

PBS Assistant Professor Sydney Trask

A new paradigm for treating fear and anxiety

Another large area of Trask’s research is aversive fear and fear-memory formation. Through this work she and her collaborators are developing new approaches to reducing exacerbated fear learning following stress, similar to the behaviors prevalent in PTSD and other fear and anxiety- related disorders. Her work specifically focuses on developing an alternative to what she calls the hallmark “extinction-based” treatment and replacing it with a “deflation-based” treatment.

As she explains it, “What we do in our paradigm is very similar to extinction except in extinction you do not present an aversive stimulus. In extinction, it’s like saying, ‘the thing you think will happen, don’t worry, it’s not going to happen.’ What we do instead is try to change the emotional value of the stimulus. We say, ‘the thing you think is going to happen, it’s still going to happen but it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be.’”

It’s the difference between changing the cognitive process surrounding a memory and changing the feeling attached to it, she explains: “What we’re trying to do is change the feeling.”

Their goal is to create a new behavioral procedure that’s relapse resistant because one of the hallmarks of PTSD or extinction-based therapy is that it comes back. “We think the more we can target feelings,” she says, “the more resistant it might be to relapse.”

Getting started

Trask is excited to be joining a department in which so many people study animal neuroscience and have interests in learning and memory, as well as pain and stress-processing. She is optimistic about work in her lab and about her teaching. She will be teaching Neural Bases of Learning and Memory in the fall 2025 semester.

You know, all those topics she once so studiously sought to avoid, that are now front and center of her world.

LIZ ROSDEITCHER
Science Writer