My lab's research interests and projects are:
- Mechanisms of cerebral blood flow regulation in healthy humans and in athletes with sport related brain injury.
- Influence of environmental stressors such as high altitude (i.e., hypoxia), carbon dioxide, thermal, and orthostatic stress on cerebrovascular function.
- Influence of exercise training on cerebrovascular function.
My main research focus centres around the issue of how contracting skeletal muscle can communicate with blood vessels in order to ensure adequate blood flow to the working skeletal muscle cells. There is a direct relationship between skeletal muscle metabolic rate and blood flow. This type of relationship requires that active skeletal muscle cells communicate their need for blood flow to the cells of the vasculature, endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells, and that these cells alter their function in order to ensure the proper blood flow delivery. I am interested in this intercellular communication.
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