Integrated control of cerebral blood flow

Donald G Welsh is a Scientist at the Robarts Research Institute, Professor in the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology (Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry) at Western University and the Rorabeck Chair in Neuroscience and Vascular Biology. His research focuses on ion channels and cellular mechanisms by which these membrane proteins regulate arterial tone development. His most significant contributions include: 1) quantification of electrical communication in resistance arteries, work that has fostered a deeper understanding of excitation-contraction coupling in vascular smooth muscle; 2) characterization and function of Ttype Ca2+ channels, elusive membrane proteins which appear to play a key role in gating of large co ductance Ca2+-activated K+ channels; and 3) defining the basis of myogenic tone, work that entailed the development of new biochemical, Ca2+imaging and myography approaches. The latter is of particular importance to the blood pressure regulation and the control of blood flow delivery to the brain.

Dr Stephen Payne is an Associate Professor in in Biomedical Engineering at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, part of the Department of Engineering Science (and winner of a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2015) at the University of Oxford. His work lies primarily in mathematical modelling and signal processing related to cerebral blood flow and metabolism with the main focus on cerebral autoregulation. He has raised funding of over £1.2M in grants as a PI and been a Co-Investigator on three other grants (with a share of £1.3M), with funding coming from EPSRC, BBSRC, Wellcome Trust and the European Commission. His publications include three books (including Cerebral Autoregulation in 2016 and Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism in 2017), and 90 papers in international journals (h-index of 21 with over 1300 citations). He has supervised 23 DPhil students to successful completion. He is currently the Chair of CARNet and the Chair of the Organising Committee for both the 8th International Conference on Cerebral Autoregulation (June 2018) and the Royal Society meeting on Integrated Control of Cerebral Blood Flow (December 2018).

Dr Caroline Rickards is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology & Anatomy at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. She is Director of the Cerebral & Cardiovascular Physiology Laboratory where her research focuses on the development of novel therapies to improve vital organ perfusion under stress (including hemorrhage, cardiac arrest, and stroke). She has received funding for this research from the US Department of Defense, the American Heart Association, private foundations, and industry contracts. Dr Rickards is also an active member within her professional societies, including service on a number of committees within the American Physiological Society, Secretary of the Cerebral Autoregulation Research Network (CARNet), and editorial board membership for the Journal of Physiology and the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

Professor Tom Robinson undertook his medical training in Nottingham, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Leicester, and is currently Head of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences and Professor of Stroke Medicine at the University of Leicester, and also an Honorary Consultant Physician in Stroke Medicine for University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. He was appointed an NIHR Senior Investigator in April 2016.

His other responsibilities include: Chair of the Membership Committee of the European Stroke Organisation, President of the British Association of Stroke Physicians, and National Specialty Lead for Stroke for the NIHR Clinical Research Network.

His research interests include clinical trials in acute stroke, particularly blood pressure and thrombolysis management, and studies of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular regulatory mechanisms. His research is currently funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Stroke Association, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the National Institute of Health Research.

Marc Poulin is Professor of Physiology in the Cumming School of Medicine (Departments of Physiology & Pharmacology, and Clinical Neurosciences) and the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. He is a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, and the O’Brien Institute of Public Health at the University of Calgary. He also holds the Brenda Strafford Foundation Chair in Alzheimer Research. He obtained a Bachelor of Physical and Health Education (Honors) from Laurentian University (Sudbury, Ontario; 1986), an MA and PhD in Exercise Physiology from the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada; 1988 and 1993) and a DPhil in Respiratory and Cerebrovascular Human Physiology from the University of Oxford (New College; Oxford, UK; 1999).

His research focuses on the mechanisms of cerebrovascular regulation and perturbations in blood gases in health and disease. His two primary research areas include i) healthy brain aging and dementia (focusing on the impact of exercise on cerebral blood flow and cognitive function), and ii) the effects of intermittent hypoxia in health (using experimental human models), in workers who work at high altitude, and in the pathogenesis of obstructive sleep apnea. He holds grant funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Professor Daniel Bulte is an MRI physicist and an Associate Professor in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. He is based at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) and previously worked at the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) for over 10 years, and the University of Toronto before that. He obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a BSc in Physics from the University of Tasmania in Australia. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Oxford University. He is passionate about teaching and outreach and has won numerous awards for his teaching.

Claudine Gauthier is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at Concordia University and a researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute. Her research explores the quantification of physiological changes in the brain using MRI during aging, vascular diseases, and preventative interventions such as exercise and cognitive training. Dr Gauthier did her PhD in Neuroscience at Université de Montréal with Dr Richard Hoge on the development of calibrated fMRI methods for quantification of brain metabolism, and the study of aging-related changes in vascular and metabolic health. Her post-doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig with Dr Robert Turner and Dr Arno Villringer explored the use of ultra-high field MRI for enhanced metabolic quantification and quantitative multi-modal MRI of learning-induced plasticity. Dr Gauthier is the co-founder of the Imaging Cerebral Physiology network and is currently the recipient of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada New Investigator Award and the Henry JM Barnett Scholarship for her work on stroke.

David J Mikulisis is Full Professor and Director of the Functional Brain Imaging Lab in the Dept. of Medical Imaging at the University of Toronto and the University Health Network in Toronto. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Toronto Western Research Institute and Co-Chair of the Vessel Wall Imaging International Study Group of the American Society of Neuroradiology. The primary emphasis of his work has been translational research focusing on the application of novel imaging methods to the clinical environment. He established one of the first fMRI labs in Canada in 1993 and is currently involved in developing advanced neurovascular imaging methods with major program arms including: 1) quantitative measurement and clinical application of cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) metrics via precision control of blood oxygen and carbon dioxide, 2) high resolution and functional imaging of intra and extra-cranial blood vessel walls. Work in these areas has led to improved understanding of neurovascular uncoupling that may explain the origin of chronic ischemic white matter injury a major contributor to vascular dementia, and 3) imaging the glymphatic system.

Catherine N Hall is interested in how the brain balances energy supply and demand. During her PhD (with John Garthwaite, UCL), she studied nitric oxide (NO) consumption by brain tissue. As a post-doctoral researcher (with David Attwell, UCL), she investigated when NO impacts brain oxygen consumption and how much oxygen is required by different components of neuronal transmission. She then studied how NO and other signalling molecules interact to control the brain’s energy supply by regulating the tone of capillary pericytes. They found that capillaries dilate before arterioles in vivo, and constrict and die after ischaemia. This suggests pericytes may initiate the vascular response to neuronal activity, but could contribute to hypoperfusion and delayed neuronal damage after stroke. In 2014 she became a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex, and now studies how neurovascular coupling varies during different brain states and at the onset of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and obesity.

Renaud Jolivet studied theoretical biophysics at the University of Lausanne (1996-2001) before doing a PhD in computational neuroscience at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland (2001-2005). After his doctoral studies, he was a postdoc in Lausanne (2006-2007) and a fellow in Tokyo, Zürich and London (2007-2015). Since 2016, he is Joint Titular Professor in Medical Physics at CERN and at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His main interest lies in the organization of brain energy metabolism and in the relation between energy consumption and information processing in neural networks, which his team studies in both experiments and computational models. He also holds a particular interest in the non-neuronal cells of the brain.

Anna Devor holds two academic appointments as Associate Adjunct Professor in Neurosciences and Radiology at University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Instructor in Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH, Harvard Medical School). Dr Devor has a broad base of knowledge in cellular and systems-level neuroscience. Her secondary expertise is development and refinement of microscopic optical technology for imaging of brain activity in live animals (in vivo).

Dr Devor received her initial research training at the interface between experimental and computational neuroscience at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her PhD thesis focused on biophysical mechanisms of the membrane potential oscillations in a network of electrically coupled neurons. After completing her PhD in 2001, she went on to specialise in optical and MR-based imaging technology at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH before taking up an independent position as Instructor in Radiology at the same institution in 2004. In 2005, she accepted a second academic appointment at UCSD.

The core of Dr Devor’s research program is focused on dissecting neuronal, glial and vascular mechanisms that underlie signals obtained with noninvasive brain imaging modalities such as fMRI. She has published extensively on imaging and recording of brain activity using 2-photon microscopy, voltage- and calcium-sensitive sensors, O₂-sensitive phosphorescent probes, intrinsic optical contrasts and extracellular electrophysiological recordings. These microscopic measurements are integrated in a computational framework that allows prediction of macroscopic fMRI responses. Dr Devor also applies novel imaging technologies for in vivo investigation of mouse models of neurological disease and human stem cell-derived neurons transplanted in the mouse brain.

Professor Costantino Iadecola is the Director and Chair of the Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine. He has published over 300 journal articles and plays a leadership role in national and international networks for stroke and dementia research. Dr Iadecola is a recipient of two Javits Awards (2009 and 2015) from the National Institutes of Health, the Willis Award from the American Heart Association (AHA), and of the Zenith Fellow Award from the Alzheimer’s Association. In 2015 he received the Excellence Award for Hypertension Research (Novartis-AHA), in recognition of his seminal work on Alzheimer’s disease pathology and hypertension. He is on the editorial boards of several journals and has been active in various editorial capacities for Stroke, Hypertension, Circulation, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Neuroscience. In 2015 he was elected to the Association of American Physicians. Dr Iadecola is currently the Principal Investigator of several NIH grants and of grants from the Leon Levy Foundation and the Leducq Foundation.

Dr Kevin Shoemaker is a Professor of Kinesiology and a Canada Research Chair in the Integrative Physiology of Exercise and Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. His research emphasises the role of physical activity and exercise training in brain health, focusing on neurologic and vascular outcomes. Currently, he engages neuroimaging and microneurographic techniques to understand the cortical pathways and communication strategies used by the autonomic nervous system to affect homeostatic cardiovascular adjustments. His research also focuses on the cerebrovascular vulnerability to chronic inflammatory conditions, and its adaptability to exercise interventions.

Dr Aaron Phillips research combines integrated physiology and neuroscience in order to understand cardiovascular function. Currently, the laboratory has two primary foci: the first is to understand the mechanisms underlying neurovascular regulation in the human brain; the second is to develop a neurostimulation therapy for restoring cardiovascular health in those with autonomic dysfunction.

Aaron is currently collaborating with labs in Switzerland and Croatia as well as with clinicians in Minnesota to deeply understand the capacity of electrical stimulation of the spinal cord to control autonomic function. These studies are using murine models, as well as non-human primates and humans.

Dr J Andrew Taylor is an integrative physiologist, with a research focus on human cardiovascular autonomic function and control. His doctoral research focused on the effects of age on the cardiovascular autonomic responses to exercise and orthostatic stress. His work extended into the impact of psychological stress on cardiovascular control during a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University Medical Center, and into the alterations in cardiovascular autonomic function during and after microgravity at the Medical College of Virginia. Subsequently, he joined the Division on Aging at HMS, and after ten years, moved to the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at HMS. He currently conducts clinical/translational research on cardiovascular autonomic control and the impact of exercise on human health and disease. This includes work that helped to define the autonomic and myogenic controllers of cerebral blood flow control and approaches to trenchantly assess cerebral blood flow control in humans.