Dr. Lenz's Lab Website
 

Current Research Description

The Lenz lab at OSU is dedicated to understanding how the brain develops and changes during particularly flexible periods of life: before birth, during childhood, adolescence, and pregnancy.  We focus on interactions between an individual’s sex, hormones, immune signals, and how they influence the brain’s response to lived experiences that can increase risk for long term negative behavioral outcomes, such as stress, inflammation, and traumatic injury, to discover novel interventions to prevent long-term consequences of these experiences.  From a cellular and molecular standpoint, my lab focuses primarily on immune cells that reside in the brain which interact with neurons to shape brain and behavioral function.