Jessica Osterhout, Ph.D.

Research

My lab will explore how the brain senses infection to generate the symptoms associated with illness. When animals are sick, they exhibit a stereotypical set of reactions that fight the infection, promote recovery, and increase the odds of survival—including elevated body temperatures, loss of appetite, and fatigue. But how does the immune system communicate with the brain to identify the infection and coordinate the appropriate physiological and behavioral response? As a postdoctoral fellow, I found that cells in brain sensory regions called circumventricular organs (CVOs) contain receptors that respond to systemic inflammation and secrete signals that activate nearby neurons to trigger the symptoms of sickness. Now, using cutting-edge methods in single-cell spatial and transcriptomic sequencing, computational biology, and molecular immunology, we will unravel how these specialized cell types evoke infection-specific responses and explore how CVOs govern symptoms associated with noninfectious inflammatory states, such as chronic stress or chronic immune conditions, work that could produce novel strategies for treating symptoms arising from chronic diseases and other disorders accompanied by immune dysregulation.