Dr. Karishma Chhabria
I am a neuroscientist interested in deciphering mysteries of brain blood flow regulation.
Research interests
Cerebral blood flow regulation, neural circuits, brainstem, information processing
Computational modelling neurovascular coupling
I started off as an engineer in bioengineering and published few papers on modelling neurovascular coupling under the influence of different energy (ATP) production rates. The computational models I designed ranged from biophysical Hodgkin Huxley type models to simple oscillator models showing bifurcation regimes with different extraneuronal levels of ATP. I also published a joint author paper on vascular network “fed” autoencoder model shows efficient convergence under desynchronised vasomotion which has interesting implications on the role of vascular network in the brain in information processing.
Chhabria K, Chakravarthy VS. Low-dimensional models of “neuro-glio-vascular unit” for describing neural dynamics under normal and energy-starved conditions. Frontiers in neurology. 2016 Mar 9;7:24.
Philips RT, Chhabria K, Chakravarthy VS. Vascular dynamics aid a coupled neurovascular network learn sparse independent features: a computational model. Frontiers in neural circuits. 2016 Feb 26;10:7.
Cerebral blood flow regulation in zebrafish models
I switched to pursuing experimental neuroscience for my graduate school. I worked at University of Sheffield and established a zebrafish model of neurovascular coupling. I explored several realms of zebrafish cerebral blood flow during my PhD including the effect of hyperglycemia on structure and function of zebrafish brain vasculature. My experiments ranged from neuroimaging of calcium to behavioral quantification using k means clustering machine learning algorithms.
Chhabria K, Plant K, Bandmann O, Wilkinson RN, Martin C, Kugler E, Armitage PA, Santoscoy PL, Cunliffe VT, Huisken J, McGown A. The effect of hyperglycemia on neurovascular coupling and cerebrovascular patterning in zebrafish. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism. 2020 Feb;40(2):298-313.
Chhabria K, Vouros A, Gray C, MacDonald RB, Jiang Z, Wilkinson RN, Plant K, Vasilaki E, Howarth C, Chico TJ. Sodium nitroprusside prevents the detrimental effects of glucose on the neurovascular unit and behaviour in zebrafish. Disease models & mechanisms. 2019 Sep 1;12(9):dmm039867.
Savage AM, Kurusamy S, Chen Y, Jiang Z, Chhabria K, MacDonald RB, Kim HR, Wilson HL, van Eeden FJ, Armesilla AL, Chico TJ. tmem33 is essential for VEGF-mediated endothelial calcium oscillations and angiogenesis. Nature communications. 2019 Feb 13;10(1):732.
Kugler EC, van Lessen M, Daetwyler S, Chhabria K, Savage AM, Silva V, Plant K, MacDonald RB, Huisken J, Wilkinson RN, Schulte‐Merker S. Cerebrovascular endothelial cells form transient Notch‐dependent cystic structures in zebrafish. EMBO reports. 2019 Aug;20(8):e47047.
Kugler EC, Frost J, Silva V, Plant K, Chhabria K, Chico TJ, Armitage PA. Zebrafish vascular quantification: a tool for quantification of three-dimensional zebrafish cerebrovascular architecture by automated image analysis. Development. 2022 Feb 1;149(3):dev199720.
Circuit investigation of cerebral blood flow regulation
In my postdoctoral years so far I have been working on investigating neural circuit based mechanisms of cerebral blood flow regulation-an aspect less studied and imperative to understand brain physiology in health and diseases. I am focussing on one circuit arising from brainstem while systematically establishing its importance in physiology. I am interested in investigating the role of this circuit during sleep however from vascular lens. To this end, I use various multimodal imaging techniques such as laser doppler flowmetry, two photon microscopy , widefield and intrinsic imaging in awake mice.
I have a recent fascinating collaborative project accepted and published in Nature.
J. W. Lovelace*, J. Ma*, S. Yadav, K. Chhabria, H. Shen, Z. Pang, T. Qi, R. Sehgal, Y. Li, Y. Zhang, T. Bali, T. Vaissiere, S. Tan, G. Rumbaugh, L. Ye, D. Kleinfeld, C. Stringer and V. Augustine. Genetically defined vagal sensory neurons that mediate the Bezold-Jarisch reflex and induce syncope, Nature (2023) in press
More exciting research papers coming soon…