Brendan Dougherty
University of Minnesota, MN·Neuroscience
Breathing is not fixed. The nerve circuits that control it can strengthen or adjust over time, a property called respiratory neuroplasticity, which lets breathing adapt to illness, environment and age.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
- Topics
respiratory neuroplasticity
respiratory motor plasticity
breathing control
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Test whether spinal estrogen receptor signaling is necessary for respiratory neuroplasticity in female and male rats, using nerve recordings of breathing output with estrogen receptor drugs and siRNA gene knockdown.
- Determine whether activating spinal estrogen receptors (ERα, ERβ, GPER) is sufficient to restore respiratory plasticity in rats whose gonads have been removed, lowering their sex hormones.
- Test whether estradiol permits respiratory plasticity by regulating spinal microglia, the spinal cord's immune cells, using flow cytometry, mass spectrometry and protein biochemistry.
- Compare how females and males use different estrogen receptor types, including spinal conversion of testosterone to estradiol in males, to enable breathing plasticity.
More about the research
Sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone strongly shape plasticity elsewhere in the nervous system. Yet their role in breathing control has been unclear, and so have sex differences in how this plasticity develops.
Why it matters
Understanding how estrogen enables breathing circuits to adapt in both sexes fills a basic gap in respiratory biology. The results are meant to inform ongoing translational studies that try to harness respiratory neuroplasticity for therapy. That could eventually help with treatments that need to strengthen breathing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Dayna Averitt
Texas Woman's University, TX·Neuroscience
Test the hypothesis that estrogen enhances serotonin-driven immune-to-neuron signaling at trigeminal sensory neurons, using a rat unilateral anterior crossbite model of temporomandibular joint pain combined with pain behavior testing.
Kristi Streeter
Marquette University, WI·Neuroscience
Test whether activating phrenic proprioceptors, the stretch sensors of the diaphragm, induces a form of phrenic motor plasticity mechanistically distinct from other respiratory plasticity, using in vivo neurophysiology in rats to probe spinal mechanisms.
Sabhya Rana
Ohio State University, OH·Neuroscience·Early-career
Develop an effective transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation protocol that increases phrenic nerve activation after cervical spinal cord injury in rats, using controlled neurophysiological nerve recordings.
The school
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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