Engler-Chiurazzi Elizabeth B

Central Theme: I aim to understand how the central nervous and immune systems converge to impact brain function and health in the context of cognitive aging, brain injury, and affective/mood disorders. Techniques: Rodent behavioral assessment (mouse and rat): cognitive assessment (radial arm maze, Morris maze, delayed match/non-match to sample, object recognition/location recognition, passive avoidance, t/y-maze), anxiety assessment (open field, elevated plus maze, marble burying, novelty-induced hypophagia), locomotor assessment (visible platform, rotarod), nociception (hot plate, tail flick), sensorimotor (modified neurological stroke severity score, adhesive dot removal, cylinder test, grip strength/wire hang, ladder test), depression-like behavior (forced swim test, social defeat stress paradigm, sucrose preference, tail suspension test), molecular and biochemical assessment (ELISA, flow cytometry, microarray gene expression, immunohistology, RT-PCR; western blot), cell quantification (unbiased stereology, ImageJ, voxel-based morphology), surgery (ovariectomy, osmotic pump insertion, photothrombotic stroke; cardiocentesis, perfusion, brain and pituitary extraction, organ extraction).