We commonly think of touch as an enjoyable, but not an exceptionally important part of our everyday lives. However, touch plays a critical role in shaping the way we move, feel pain, and socialize. In addition, touch is the only sense that if deprived in early childhood can result in catastrophic consequences to brain function. Thus, a fundamental question remains: what are the molecules, neurons, and circuits that make this sense so vital? Our research program provides a new mechanistic framework for understanding the skin-to-brain circuits responsible for the many functions of touch, revealing fundamental principles of how touch shapes our everyday behavior and who we are as humans. More specifically, our research program defines the neural circuit underpinnings of touch perception by providing a quantitative, biological, and mechanistic level understanding of how touch shapes our everyday experiences: from the seemingly mundane (like walking) to the complex and abstract (like pleasure and well-being). These are key question that we are answering:
- How does touch modulate movement in health and disease? For example, after a spinal cord injury?
- How do touch signals from the skin merge with top-down modulatory signals in the spinal cord to shape how spinal cord ascending systems encode the valence of touch stimuli (from pleasure to pain).
- How does the brain encode the valence of touch stimuli?
- How touch experiences during infancy (like maternal touch) are critical for normal brain development, maturation, and function.
Collaborations within the Keck Center :
Max Tischfield- we are collaborating on computer vision approaches to scale rodent behavior applicable to all questions above (#1-4)
Rafiq Huda- See #3 above: How do inhibitory microcircuits in supraspinal touch centers scale pain after an injury?
Kelvin Kwan- see #4 above: how does activity (early life experiences) in somatosensory neurons change the transcriptional profile of touch sensory neurons?
Collaborations within Rutgers:
David Margolis- See #3 above: specific question: How do circuits in the striatum change during pain to explain changes in behavior (i.e., motivation) during chronic pain?
Tao at Newark
Collaborations outside of Rutgers:
Add BBS Collaborators: Vibu Shani, Edmund Hollis, Jenn Dulin, Phil Popovich, Dana McTigue, Vicky Tysseling,
Ishmail Abdus Saboor
Ewan St. John Smith
Eric Yittri
Gregoire Courtine