The Keeler lab studies how peripheral sensory systems encode pain and the mechanisms involved when pain becomes pathological. We have the following general interests:
1) sexual dimorphisms in pain systems and processing and the role of sex steroid hormones in the formation of chronic pain.
2) the relationship between damaged tissue (e.g. temporomandibular joint) and the neurons that innervate the damaged tissue (e.g. trigeminal somatosensory neurons), and the immune, glial, and neuronal factors that drive joint pain.
3) the role of extracellular vesicles and other forms of glia-neuronal communication in pain.
4) developing and exploring graph-based models to better understand spatial ‘omics data.