This laboratory is interested in the neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neuropharmacology of the central nervous system (CNS) pathways that convey pain, as well as the bulbospinal pathways that mediate the production of analgesia. Our studies emphasize a systems-level approach in which many different...

Research interests are directed toward the neural regulation of the circulation in pathologic states such as hypertension and heart failure. Specific studies examine the cellular and molecular mechanisms of mechanical activation of baroreceptor neurons and the role of mechanosensitive ion channels...

Dr. Benson's research interests include the study of ion channels involved in sensation. We have focused on a class of ion channels called Acid-sensing Ion Channels (ASICs), which play a role in responses to nociceptive, taste, and mechanical stimuli. We have discovered that ASICs are highly...

We are studying the role of serotonin neurons in mediating the effects of acidosis on brain function and behavior. We have shown that serotonin neurons are exquisitely sensitive to changes in pH. They are close to large arteries in the brain and contribute to the increase in breathing induced by...

Serotonin neurons are mainly localized to the raphe nuclei of the brainstem, but their axons are widely distributed throughout the nervous system and have a ubiquitous role in physiological processes and behavior. Adding to this complexity is the diverse array of high-affinity receptors that bind...

In patient with lewy body disease, the protein alpha-synuclein aggregates, leading to severe multi-system symptoms, including hallucinations, loss of smell, dementia, imbalance, fluctuating confusion, and anxiety/depression. The main research goal of the Aldridge Laboratory is to understand the...

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading cause of death in patients with intractable epilepsy, but specific mechanisms of how a seizure can cause death are poorly understood. Research efforts in my laboratory are focused on using animal models to understand the mechanisms by which...

Mental illnesses such as anxiety disorder are very common but have always been challenging to study because most symptoms are subjective, qualitative, and can vary widely across different individuals. The brain is also more complex than many other organs because different regions of the brain can...

The Williams Lab is interested in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which genetic risk factors contribute to psychiatric disease from a developmental perspective. Their current projects focus on voltage-gated calcium channel genes, which have been linked to the risk of...

My laboratory is interested in the effect of environmental pollutants, such as neurotoxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and their transformation products on the developing brain. We use exposomics approaches to identify the metabolites formed in various model systems, including animal models...

We study the neural circuits and intraneuronal signaling mechanisms that regulate appetite, body weight, sleep, and cardiorespiratory function in mice and aim to understand how these regulatory processes go awry in metabolic disorders. To this end, we employee state-of-the-art neuroscience...

Dr. Inyong Choi studies neural mechanisms of auditory processing, specifically as it applies to how the human brain segregates a target sound from a mixture of interfering sounds, how the ability degrades in hearing-impaired listeners, and how hearing interventions recover such neural processes...