While most neuroimmunologists try to understand how the immune system affects the brain, Prof. Asya Rolls has taken the road less traveled in her lab at the Technion. She and her team try to understand how the brain affects the immune system.
In this episode of Tech on Drugs, Asya and Shai talked about the power of placebo and how brain activity, particularly in the reward system, can influence the immune system.
They discussed the immense potential of harnessing brain-immune pathways for new treatment approaches. For example, research that shows that stimulating certain brain areas can boost immune responses and even reduce tumor sizes.
But it's not so simple; as Asya put it, this is "complexity on steroids." To better understand the brain-immune connection and develop more holistic treatments, future research will require advanced computational models for different diseases and tissues, as well continuous data integration.