 |
How do we know we are sick?
When we are infected, specialized immune cells signal our brains to start
a fever, make us feel miserable and cause all the other familiar symptoms
of sickness, such as fatigue and the inability to concentrate on tomorrow’s
exam. Work in the Goehler lab is focused on determining the exact ways
through which the immune system signals the brain. The immune system functions
as a sensory system tuned to detect chemical constituents of dangerous
micro-organisms, and to alert sensory components of the peripheral and
central nervous systems.We are analyzing this immunosensory system as a
whole in the same way that other sensory systems are studied: by investigating
such issues as signal transduction, receptive field characteristics, and
neural pathways in the brain driven by infection. We use a combination
of behavioral, pharmacological, surgical and many anatomical techniques.
The latter include immunocytochemistry and neuronal tract-tracing.Our lab
also studies how immune system-derived signals contribute to shifts in
affective states, especially anxiety. We aim at elucidating the neurocircuitry
that contributes to infection and immune activation-related anxiety by
assessing neural activation that correlates with behavioral measures of
anxiety in response to food-borne infectious bacteria or bacterial products.
|
Laboratory
of Neuroimmunology and Behavior