Dr. Michael Schappe, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School, Department of Cell Biology.My research ultimately seeks to understand the molecular mechanisms enabling body-brain pathways to sense and adapt physiology. I am interested how the nervous system protects the body with ‘sensory neighborhoods’ – collaborative networks in which the peripheral nervous system interacts with specialized cells, including epithelial, secretory and immune cells, to detect and transduce salient tissue signals to higher-order physiological circuits. Myresearch focuses on how visceral sensory pathways initiate protective circuits to adapt respiratory physiologyand trigger breathing reflexes.
