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Authors & Affiliations
Megan Sammons, Itay Zalayat, Re'ee Yifa, Tom Haran, Rita Sirokin, Hilla Azulay-Debby, Asya Rolls
Abstract
Increasing research demonstrates the brain can regulate peripheral immunity. We recently showed that the brain also forms neuronal representations of specific immune responses. We termed these representations as immunengrams. Chemogenetic reactivation of the neuronal ensembles that compromise these immunengrams, specifically in the insular cortex, were sufficient to re-create the original inflammatory state. These findings have major implications for our understanding of how the brain can induce disease based on a mental (sensory or cognitive) trigger. However, critical to our understanding of how the brain records immune information and can induce the specific immune response, is uncovering the networks involved. This research aims to uncover the pathways which form neuronal representations of peripheral immune responses to better understand how the immune system communicates with the nervous system and what information is conveyed. We use a combination of techniques, including whole-brain clearing and viral tracing of TRAPed (targeted-recombination-in-active-populations) neurons during peripheral inflammatory paradigms, to study the pathways which form neuronal representations of immune activity. Preliminary results show specific brain regions that change during a peripheral immune response. In particular, projections to attention and memory-related brain regions from the insular cortex are reduced during inflammation, while projections to and from the insular cortex to sensory and emotion-related areas are increased. By further interrogating these circuits, we aim to understand the role of these brain regions during the encoding of peripheral immune responses by the insular cortex, helping us better under physiology and immunity.