Our laboratory studies the spinal networks that regulate the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. We also study the plasticity of these networks after spinal cord injury.  Each year, approximately ten thousand Americans seriously injure their spinal cords. Quite correctly, most research has been directed toward restoring these patients’ abilities to move (including breathing, working with their hands and arms, and walking). The greatest danger to patients after spinal cord injury, however, derives from malfunctions of the autonomic nervous system, especially loss of bladder and bowel control and loss of cardiovascular regulation.  We do not yet know whether implementation of new treatments for spinal cord injury will improve or exacerbate these conditions because it is not clear whether these treatments will promote appropriate or inappropriate spinal cord connections. We work with both normal and injured spinal cords as well as with co-cultures of brain and spinal cord.  We conduct neurophysiological and neuroanatomical experiments designed to elucidate the spinal connections responsible for the generation of sympathetic activity in normal spinal cords and the degree of specificity of modified connections during repair of the spinal cord after traumatic injury.