Join Aaron Phillips, PhD, as he shares his research involving neural hemodynamic control in pre-clinical and clinical models.

The nervous system and cardiovascular system are exquisitely linked in an effort to control hemodynamics and maintain organ perfusion. In many neurological conditions, cardiovascular control is disrupted, leading to inappropriate hemodynamics and organ trauma. This is particularly true in the context of spinal cord injury, where the disconnection of the supraspinal hemodynamic regulatory centers leaves the sympathetic nervous system orphaned, and prone to life-threatening erratic blood pressure.

In this webinar, Dr. Phillips will review next-generation techniques for interrogating the sympathetic nervous system in the context of hemodynamic control, using both the clinical setting with humans and the preclinical setting with non-human animals. We will review the basic neurovascular anatomy, discuss new computational approaches for data analysis, review natural and biomimetic artificial closed-loop control systems for hemodynamic stability, review virally-mediated neuron tracing specific to sympathetic hemodynamic control, and describe neuron-specific sympathetic nervous system manipulation for establishing causal mechanisms through optogenetics and chemogenetics.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Sympathetic neuro-anatomy relevant to blood pressure control
• Closed-loop control implemented in spinal cord stimulation approaches
• Dimensionality reduction approaches for hemodynamic analysis
• Optogenetic manipulation of sympathetic preganglionic neurons in preclinical models
• Electrical epidural stimulation for blood pressure stabilization after spinal cord injury