Welcome to the Osborn Lab

How does your brain “know” what your blood pressure is?

Why is salt in your diet salt linked to high blood pressure (hypertension)?

What is the connection between your diet, brain function and hypertension?

These are just a few of the questions we are trying to answer in our laboratory.  Our long-term goal is to answer the BIG question: how does the brain process the barrage of neural and hormonal signals it “senses”, to adjust nervous system activity to regulate arterial pressure - day in, day out, over years and years.  Answering this question is important for two reasons.  First, regulation of arterial pressure is critical to our survival, yet, after more than a century of research, we still do not understand the most basic mechanisms by which the nervous system achieves this important task.  Second, understanding the neural mechanisms of cardiovascular control will enable us to develop new therapies to treat the single leading cause of death and disability in the world – hypertension.