Research

The VanderHorst lab studies how dysfunction of brainstem circuits causes non-motor and hard to treat motor symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease and non-cognitive symptoms in Alzheimer’s Disease and aging. Examples are problems with walking and balance and abnormal breathing during sleep (as in sleep apnea). One key component that we often need to address first is how brainstem circuits modulate these fundamental functions in the first place. The overall goal is to develop approaches to promote function. Our current focus is on sleep disordered breathing (e.g. sleep apnea) and gait disorders (e.g. shuffling and slowed walking) which are very common in the aging population, hard to manage, and have a major impact on quality of life.

We use state of the art mouse models in parallel to research in human subjects and clinical pathological studies to integrate neuro-physiological, neuro-anatomical, neuropathological, and clinical perspectives. By developing approaches that allow for translation between mouse models and human subject research and vice versa we aim to align these different complementary research models and take advantage of their strengths.