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Program Goals
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The Significance of Training in Respiratory Neurobiology
Despite its fundamental importance to life, our understanding of the respiratory control system is rudimentary at best. Indeed, the most important problems in respiratory neurobiology have yet to be solved. For example, we still do not know definitively how respiratory rhythm originates. We do not know how the ventilatory control system adjusts ventilation in precise relation to metabolic demand (e.g. exercise hyperpnea). We have only very recently begun to appreciate that there is plasticity in the neural system that controls breathing, and certainly do not yet have a good understanding of its role in normal and pathophysiological states. We do not know the mechanisms that underlie profound differences in ventilatory control between sleep and wakefulness. Given the virtual explosion in our understanding of neurobiology during the recent “Decade of the Brain,” and the accessibility of molecular biological techniques that allow detailed investigations not formerly possible, the timing is right for great advances in our understanding of this critical homeostatic control system and its fundamental contributions during health and disease. To make these advances, new generations of researchers must be trained with the requisite background and skills to appreciate complex integrated systems, combining the power of cellular/molecular studies in the context of complex organ systems (i.e. respiratory system), or across multiple, interacting organ systems (e.g. cardio-respiratory, sleep-breathing, respiration-locomotion). The fundamental goal of this training program is to train this next generation of integrative biologists with a focus on respiratory neurobiology and (upper) airway control. Our next goal is to promote an awareness of translational research, training researchers that will translate fundamental basic science discoveries into clinical applications.Research InterestsFour main research focus themes can be identified from the strengths of our faculty trainers:
- Cell signaling, gene expression and physiological responses to hypoxia;
- Neuroplasticity and its impact on respiratory motor control;
- Neurobiology of sleep and sleep disordered breathing;
- Cardio-respiratory responses of humans and other animals to hypoxia, exercise and sleep.
Other interests of the faculty trainers include the impact of age, sex and genetics on ventilatory control, ventilatory control during traumatic or degenerative neural diseases (e.g. spinal cord injury and ALS) and the regulation of airways and pulmonary circulation. Each thematic research group is characterized by the inclusion of trainers working at multiple levels of biological organization, but with a sufficiently common theme to assure interaction. Further, each theme is distinct, yet overlaps sufficiently with the others to foster considerable cross-group interaction. Most trainers actively research topics in more than one area, and have an extensive, documented history of scientific collaboration, thereby assuring extensive interactions among training faculty and trainees. Common scientific foundations lend cohesiveness to the training program, such as the focus on sleep and sleep-disordered breathing, which is complementary to all other focus groups (e.g. respiratory plasticity induced by intermittent hypoxia, hypoxia induced gene expression and cardio-respiratory responses to sustained and intermittent hypoxia). Our expectation is that trainees will benefit from the existence of multiple, complementary thematic research groups, expanding their research experiences across specializations.