Even if we don't think about it, we all continuously breathe from birth until death. The Hodges Lab is focused on understanding how our brains unconsciously control breathing, and what goes wrong with this neural circuit in human disease. We are interested in how repeated seizures may disturb cardiorespiratory neural networks controlling breathing and heart rate leading to Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) in novel rat models. We are also testing new drug compounds that may reverse the strong and sometimes lethal actions of synthetic opioids like fentanyl to combat the ever-growing opioid crisis. Our goal is to probe mechanisms of dysfunction in models of human disease in order to better treat or prevent negative outcomes in patients.
About
Dr. Matt Hodges completed his BA in Biology at Carleton College in Northfield, MN (1998), before joining Dr. Bert Forster's Lab, first as a technician and then as a PhD student (2000) in the Physiology Department at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Upon completing his PhD (2004), he joined the lab of Dr. George Richerson as a post-doc at Yale University's School of Medicine. He then rejoined the Physiology Department at MCW (2009) as a faculty member, where he serves as the Principal Investigator of the lab. Dr. Hodges has been (nearly) continuously funded by the NIH for his research since 2009, and now serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in Physiology at MCW.
Scientific Projects
We use a variety of scientific approaches to understand how the brain regulates breathing and heart rate in health and disease. We use direct cellular recordings and state-of-the-art single-cell RNA sequencing, transcriptomics to uncover how repeated seizures affect the control of breathing by studying unique knockout and transgenic rats coupled with pharmacological manipulations. Our expertise also includes deep physiological phenotyping of the effects of fentanyl in large animals in order to test novel reversal agents for opioid induced respiratory depression. We are dedicated to harnessing our technical abilities to mitigate or eliminate respiratory dysfunction in opioid use disorder and sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.
People
Many high school, undergraduate, PhD, medical and combined MD/PhD student trainees have contributed to the ongoing work in the Hodges Lab. We have enjoyed the comradery and collegiality among our trainees, staff and investigators. Along with Drs. Bert Forster and Gary Mouradian, Dr. Hodges mentors PhD students in developing a strong knowledge base for their thesis work, and provides training in grant writing skills. We welcome additional interested graduate students, post-docs and technicians (click link below).