Professor Julian Paton

Research summary

Paton’s group seeks to understand what changes within the central nervous system during the aetiology of neurogenic hypertension. Sympathetic nerve activity destined for the heart and arterioles is elevated prior to the onset of hypertension, which is suggestive of a causative role. In hypertension, cerebral vascular resistance is elevated causing brain hypoperfusion – a well known stimulant of sympathetic activity and hypertension. The microvasculature of the brainstem is also inflamed.

The hypothesis of elevated brainstem vascular resistance and inflammation as causative to hypertension is being explored in animal models and human patients. Transcriptomic analysis of brainstem genes altered in hypertension ...

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Recent publications

• Smith, JC, Sheikh, APA, Borgmann, A, Rybak, IA & Paton, JFR 2013, ‘Brainstem respiratory networks: building blocks and microcircuits’. Trends in Neurosciences, vol 36., pp. 152-62
• Toward, MA, Abdala, AP, Knopp, SJ, Paton, JFR & Bissonnette, JM 2013, ‘Increasing brain serotonin corrects CO2 chemosensitivity in methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (Mecp2)-deficient mice’. Experimental Physiology, vol 98., pp. 842-9

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View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system