The Audet Lab studies how stressful experiences across the lifespan may come to promote vulnerability to mental illnesses, with a specific focus on the gut microbiota-immune-brain axis (inflammatory signaling routes between the gut environment and the brain that are modulated by gut microbes). Our research examines the mechanisms by which gut bacteria and the brain talk to each other under stress and how this crosstalk may influence mood and behavior. We also investigate the effects of lifestyle interventions, including dietary interventions and changes in physical activity levels, in limiting the microbiota, inflammatory, and behavioral effects resulting from stressor exposure. A major focus of our work is also devoted to the establishment of sex differences in relation to the microbiota, inflammatory, and behavioral effects of stressors and of lifestyle interventions.