Connecting the brain, breathing and heart

Dr. Richard Wilson's research sits at the intersection of neuroscience, breathing, and cardiovascular physiology. 

A professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Cumming School of Medicine, Wilson studies how these systems interact, and how dysfunction in one can drive disease in the others.

“Ultimately, I am driven by interest, motivated by disease,” says Wilson.

That combination of curiosity and clinical relevance has led him into collaborations across neuroscience, respiratory physiology, cardiovascular science, ophthalmology, high-altitude physiology, and spinal cord injury research. 

Most recently, it has led to discoveries that challenge long-standing assumptions about how the body senses oxygen and regulates blood pressure. 

After years of working alongside Libin members, Wilson recently joined the Libin Cardiovascular Institute to build new connections and expand collaborative cardiorespiratory research.

Wilson's interest in neuroscience began early in life. 

At 14, he read Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and became fascinated by how biology shapes the brain, behaviour and the way organisms respond to the world. This fascination sparked a keen interest in physiology, particularly how neurons influence behaviour. Over time, that interest expanded beyond the brain itself.

“I was interested in neurocircuits, and that led me to how they function in cardiorespiratory diseases,” he says.

Wilson earned his PhD at the University of Glasgow in neurobiology and completed a four-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. He later came to Calgary for a five-year postdoctoral fellowship and has remained here since.

Today, Wilson's lab seeks to understand the connection between the brain and the cardiorespiratory system, particularly in disease states. 

His team has studied conditions ranging from sleep apnea, hypertension, and heart disease to postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), orthostatic hypotension, sudden infant death syndrome, asthma and spinal cord injury.

Wilson explains that the brain, breathing and cardiovascular system are closely interconnected.

"The brain regulates breathing and circulation; breathing shapes brain function, cardiac performance, and vascular control; and cardiovascular state alters both cerebral function and respiratory stability," he says.

This interest in heart-lung-brain interactions has led Wilson and his team in several unexpected directions.

Over the years, the lab has undertaken numerous innovative projects, including high-altitude experiments in Bolivia examining how oxygen-sensing organs in the neck, called carotid bodies, respond in low-oxygen environments.

Another intriguing area of research grew out of an unexpected experience during a routine eye exam. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive imaging technology commonly used by eye specialists to diagnose and monitor eye disease. Wilson, however, saw broader possibilities.

Rather than focusing solely on the eye, he realized the technology could provide a unique window into the brain's microvasculature and its regulation. 

The idea emerged after an eye scan suggested Wilson may have experienced a mini-stroke. Although further investigation revealed a benign anomaly, the image triggered a new line of thinking.

"I remember looking at the image and thinking, ‘That’s a model of the brain's microvasculature!’” says Wilson. 

That observation set off a 10-year research program to develop functional OCT as a way to monitor dynamic changes in blood vessels. Wilson is now using the technology to study high-altitude physiology, autonomic disorders such as POTS and orthostatic hypotension, and, most recently, spinal cord injury. 

He believes the approach may also have diagnostic value in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

Through these and other studies, Wilson has come to appreciate just how dynamic the neurocircuits regulating breathing and circulation truly are. 

His lab takes an integrative approach to understanding health and disease, with particular emphasis on oxygen sensing, autonomic regulation and cardiorespiratory failure. It is here that some of its most surprising work has emerged.

For decades, physiologists have held that the body senses oxygen and regulates blood pressure through the brainstem and peripheral organs such as the carotid bodies, not through the spinal cord itself. 

Wilson's team has found otherwise. 

His lab’s discovery of spinal oxygen sensors and an intrinsic spinal baroreflex suggests the spinal cord can independently detect oxygen and help stabilize blood pressure, challenging a textbook view of how these systems are controlled.

The implications are most immediate for spinal cord injury, where the normal lines of communication between brain and body are severed. If these spinal sensors can be engaged directly, they may offer a new route to restoring cardiovascular stability in patients whose brainstem control has been cut off.

For Wilson, joining the Libin is an opportunity to connect fundamental physiology with clinical cardiovascular problems. 

By combining neuroscience, respiratory physiology, vascular imaging, and autonomic medicine, he hopes to build collaborations that reveal how these systems fail and how they can be restored in patients with cardiovascular and respiratory disease.