The Translational Imaging Laboratory members are interested in the life of brain cells inside living organisms, particularly in the context of neuronal activity, blood flow, oxygen, glucose and lactate metabolism. This is important because the energetic cost of the mammalian brain is high, but the local energy storage is scarce and metabolic dysfunction of specific cells can have dramatic repercussions on brain function.
We combine modern neuroscience with multimodal imaging to identify vascular and metabolic drivers of neurological disorders across scales and species. Our goal is to identify human vulnerabilities during aging that can lead to disruption of the healthy brain function. We also investigate sex-specific changes in metabolism with aging that can drive differences in progression of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Importantly, old age is the biggest risk factor for dementia, yet the current science lacks understanding of how the ageing brain adjusts energy budgets to power cognition. Our lab aims to motivate tailored health care approaches, biomarkers and treatments that can benefit all humans.
In pursuit of this knowledge, we employ a set of interdisciplinary approaches that combine molecular tools such as optogenetics, transcriptomics and metabolomics with systems-level methods such as electrophysiology, optical imaging and Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Our work delivers cellular-level insights into human functional, structural and metabolic MRI. By integrating data from both translational models and humans, we aim to detect commonalities and divergences in metabolic patterns and their impact on aging brain networks. We apply novel image processing and computational models to identify axes of large, shared variations across the preclinical brain imaging and single cell domains. These shared axes can serve as therapeutic targets, if they can be altered, or as biomarkers if they are accessible for non-invasive quantification.
The Translational Imaging Laboratory is based in the Bioengineering Department of University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering and has solid collaborations across the School of Medicine and the School Public Health. We foster interdisciplinary research environment in which bioengineers, neuroscientists, physicists, computer scientists, and clinicians can work together to solve exciting problems.
Funding Partners
