Heidi E.W. Day, Ph.D.
Young Investigator

Dr. Heidi E.W. Day received her B.Sc. (Hons) degree in Pharmacology in 1990 from the University of Bath, U.K. She went on to the University of Cambridge, U.K., to pursue M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees at the Parke-Davis Neuroscience Research Centre (Ph.D. 1994; advisor Dr. John Hughes). During her time as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, with Dr. Huda Akil (1994 – 1999), she became interested in the neural circuitry involved in stress responses. Currently, Dr. Day is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is continuing in the field of stress research. Much of her work is aimed at understanding, at a neural circuit level, how the brain processes stressful events.

Recently she began to investigate the biological basis of exercise as a “stress-reliever”. Stress is a major precipitating or exacerbating factor in clinical depressive and anxiety disorders. Exercise is effective at preventing and treating the symptoms of these diseases, with an efficacy comparable to more conventional treatments. It is conceivable that exercise is an effective treatment due to its “stress-relieving” effects. However, the biological basis of exercise as a “stress-reliever” is not clear. They are using rat models to better understand how a history of voluntary exercise, compared to a sedentary lifestyle, can reduce the physiological effects of mild psychological stress. They hope that this will help us to understand how exercise can help humans cope better with day to day life stressors.

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