Home Department: Biology
Supported by: Anonymous Donor
Mentor: Xiaoke Chen, Biology

The ability to detect hot and cold stimuli is crucial to animals' survival. For example, unpleasant temperatures, specifically noxious heat and cold, trigger strong escape-reactions in animals. Gabbi is studying heat and cold pain in mouse spinal chord and dorsal root ganglia neurons. Her goal is to identify heat and cold pain neurons through imaging and determine their behavioral importance by silencing the neurons. These studies will provide new understandings about the spinal circuitry of thermosensation.

Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 26, 2015:

The Role of Inhibition in the Coding of Cutaneous Temperature in the Spinal Cord

Gabbi Kamalani^1,2, Chen Ran^1,2, Xiaoke Chen^1,2
[Department of Biology¹ and Bio-X², Stanford University]