Shaun F. Morrison

Specific circuits within the CNS are dedicated to the maintenance of homeostasis and an optimal cellular environment through regulation of autonomic function. Disease states such as fever, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, autonomic hyperreflexia and cardiac arrhythmia are associated with altered regulation of the sympathetic outflow to cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular tissues. 

The Morrison lab's research uses electrophysiological and anatomical approaches to understand the functional organization, rhythmicities, developmental influences and pharmacology of the CNS circuits that regulate the sympathetic outflows controlling variables critical for homeostasis such as body temperature, energy expenditure, blood glucose, blood pressure, cardiac output and plasma catecholamines.

We are currently pursuing three main areas of investigation in the rapidly growing field of autonomic neuroscience. The first concerns the regulation of the sympathetic outflow to brown adipose tissue in the rat as a model system for gaining insight into the central circuits involved in regulating energy metabolism and body temperature. The results of these studies will be relevant to altered thermoregulation occurring during fever and to the increasing public health problem of obesity, which can be viewed as an imbalance between energy intake and metabolism. We are also studying the CNS regulation of catecholamine release from the adrenal medulla, an important component of a variety of stress responses including hypoglycemia, hemorrhage, and exercise. The third area of research involves the organization of the medullary pathways regulating sympathetic outflow to the cardiovascular system. These experiments have indicated a novel source of excitatory input to the neural circuits that generate sympathetic outflow, a result which will contribute to our understanding of the elevated blood pressure in models of hypertension such as the spontaneously hypertensive rat. By addressing basic questions in autonomic neuroscience, we seek to understand the altered regulation of sympathetic outputs characteristic of several disease states.

BIOGRAPHY

Shaun Morrison is a Senior Scientist in the Division of Neuroscience. Morrison received his BA from Wesleyan University in 1970 and his PhD in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Vermont in 1980. He did postdoctoral work with Dr. Gerard Gebber in the Department of Pharmacology at Michigan State University (1980-84), became an assistant professor in the Division of Neurobiology at Cornell University Medical College (1984-90) and subsequently a professor in the Department of Physiology at Northwestern University Medical School (1990-2001). Morrison joined the Neurological Sciences Institute at OHSU in 2001 as a senior scientist and transferred to the ONPRC Division of Neuroscience as a senior scientist in 2008.

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Madden CJ, and Morrison SF. (2006) Serotonin potentiates sympathetic responses evoked by spinal NMDA, J. Physiol. (London), 577:525-537. PMID:16973701.

Nakamura K, and Morrison SF. (2008)  A thermosensory pathway that controls body temperature. Nature Neurosci., 11:62-71. PMID:18084288.

Rathner JA,  Madden CJ, and Morrison SF. (2008) Central pathway for spontaneous and prostaglandin E2-evoked cutaneous vasoconstriction, Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol., 295:R343-R354.  PMID: 18463193

Morrison SF, Nakamura K, and Madden CJ.  (2008) Central control of thermogenesis in mammals. (Invited Review), Exp. Physiol., 93: 773-797. PMID:18469069.