The cardiovascular system is normally tightly regulated by various circulating hormones and sensory signals from the peripheral vasculature. These sensory and hormonal signals are integrated in sites in the brain which modify blood pressure and cardiac function. When sensory or hormonal feedback is altered due to genetic predispositions or peripheral damage, the central regulation of blood pressure and cardiac function becomes perturbed often leading to the development of hypertension.
Hypertension remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
One of the main focusses of my lab is to gain new knowledge on how the brain integrates sensory signals involved in regulation of blood pressure and compare how activation or inhibition of different regions of the brain produces changes in sympathetic and parasympathetic drive in both normotensive and hypertensive animals. The other main focus of the lab is to utilize neuropharmacology to characterize the interconnections between different brain regions relaying cardiovascular information and to identify how neurotransmitter function is altered in hypertension. Studies are performed at both the level of the whole reflex response and at the level of the single neuron.