Immune challenges, such as viral infections or allergic asthma, can impair breathing and cognition, as observed in conditions like post-COVID brain fog.
As a 2024 Schmidt Science Fellow Pailin will use a combination of computational methods, chemogenetics, and respiratory disease models, to explore this lung-brain pathway. This could improve how we understand and treat neurological and psychiatric illnesses by incorporating the immune system as a critical regulator of the brain.
The work could lead to new therapeutic avenues for post-infection neurological syndromes, as well as neuropsychiatric and autoimmune diseases.