Message
Our bodies constantly maintain a delicate internal balance without our conscious awareness. At the Laboratory of Autonomic Physiology, we seek to understand how the autonomic nervous system -- the sympathetic and vagus nerves -- supports this balance by regulating cardiovascular function and energy metabolism.
Using conscious, freely moving animals, we conduct experiments under conditions free from the effects of anesthesia. A major strength of our laboratory is our ability to perform long-term, continuous, and simultaneous recordings of sympathetic and vagal nerve activity.
To date, we have investigated changes in sympathetic nerve activity associated with daily behaviors such as exercise and sleep, alterations in autonomic nerve activity during the development of hypertension, and the relationship between sympathetic nerve activity and specific brain regions, including the hippocampus and the paraventricular nucleus.
Currently, by simultaneously measuring sympathetic and vagal nerve activity, we aim to clarify how these neural systems maintain glucose and energy metabolic homeostasis, and how disruption of this regulation contributes to the development of diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.