Shannon L Macauley, PhD

The goal of my laboratory is to understand how alterations in brain metabolism relate to sleep impairment, vascular dysfunction, and inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease. Ultimately, the goal is to leverage these findings as therapeutic targets for treating Alzheimer’s disease and other CNS disorders, like lysosomal storage diseases.

We use a translational approach that combines rodent models, non-human primates, and human data to explore how metabolic or vascular perturbations affect the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. For our rodent studies, we use a variety of in vivo techniques, including glucose clamps, in vivo microdialysis, in vivo biosensors, EEG/EMG recordings, and small animal neuroimaging to study the acute effects of metabolic challenges on Aβ/tau dynamics, cerebral metabolism, neuronal activity, neurovascular coupling, and sleep. We also use rodent models and non-human primates to investigate how different Alzheimer’s risk factors impact pathology, metabolism, brain network connectivity, and behavior, and whether pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions targeting metabolic dysfunction reverse pathology and functional deficits in Alzheimer’s disease.