Abbie C Chapman
Binghamton University, NY·Physiology
Memory depends on a steady blood supply to the hippocampus, a deep brain structure central to learning and memory and unusually vulnerable to injury. Chronic high blood pressure affects more than 100 million US adults and speeds cognitive decline beyond what normal aging produces, often ending in vascular cognitive impairment and dementia.
- Fields
Physiology
Neuroscience
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
hippocampus
hippocampal arterioles
cerebral blood flow
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Test how chronic hypertension changes the constricting and dilating function of hippocampal arterioles, the small vessels feeding the memory center, by studying isolated pressurized vessels from normotensive and hypertensive rats.
- Determine whether circulating constrictors elevated in hypertension, including angiotensin II, endothelin-1, and tumor necrosis factor alpha, drive arteriolar hyperconstriction and damage the endothelial lining through oxidative stress.
- Track hippocampal blood flow and neurovascular coupling, the brain's ability to raise local flow when neurons fire, across the lifespan in normotensive and hypertensive rats and relate it to neuronal function and memory performance.
- Test whether therapeutically restoring hippocampal arteriole function prevents perfusion deficits, protects hippocampal neurons, and slows cognitive decline, comparing male and post-menopausal female rats for sex differences.
More about the research
What remains unclear is whether the small vessels feeding the hippocampus are the weak link. This project tests the idea that memory loss in chronic hypertension begins as a blood-vessel problem.
Why it matters
Cognitive impairment and dementia are leading causes of disability and are rising as populations age, and chronic hypertension is a major modifiable risk factor. By showing whether small-vessel dysfunction in the hippocampus comes first in hypertension-related memory loss, this work could identify the vasculature as a treatment target and a point for early intervention, and clarify whether men and post-menopausal women face different risk.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Peiying Liu
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Biomedical Engineering
Develop normalized cerebrovascular reactivity (nCVR) MRI, which uses oxygen-breathing responses to correct CO2-breathing responses. Test whether it is more reproducible and better at detecting reduced reactivity than standard BOLD-based CVR.
Cameron Mccarthy
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Physiology
Test whether loss of OGT, the enzyme that adds O-GlcNAc sugar tags to proteins, protects parenchymal arterioles from dysfunction before stroke in mice made diabetic with a high-fat diet and low-dose streptozotocin.
The school
Binghamton University: 14 labs on PI Pages, $161M a year on research, 132 research doctorates a year.
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