Michael Jarvinen

Research Interests

I am interested in how different populations of cells in the nervous system act together to respond to injury and repair in aged and developing organisms. My research focuses on factors that regulate brain plasticity/reorganization and my ideas have been funded by research grants, most notably from the National Science Foundation. I use cell culture as well as mice engineered to express fluorescent biomarkers under the control of cell-specific promoters to enable identification of microglia, neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes in the brain. I also have on-going projects with students in other areas such as gut-brain health, neurodiversity, and science literacy.