Anda M Chirila

Anda M Chirila serves as Manning Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Brown University, where she leads a research laboratory focused on neural circuits mediating touch and pain. Her work bridges molecular genetics, electrophysiology, and behavioral analysis to investigate sensory encoding and plasticity in spinal cord and brain pathways.

Dr. Chirila's research spans

• Functional organization of somatosensory neural circuits
• Plasticity mechanisms in dorsal horn processing
• Body-brain interactions in sensory encoding
• Impact of experience and internal states on sensory representations
• Translational implications for chronic pain and neurodevelopmental disorders

Her laboratory combines in vivo large-scale spinal cord electrophysiology, calcium imaging, optogenetics, and computational approaches to unravel fundamental principles of sensory processing.

Recent publications demonstrate strong trends in

• Spinal cord circuit mapping (5/10 articles)
• Autism spectrum disorder mechanisms (2/10 articles)
• Synaptic plasticity in pain pathways (3/10 articles)

with significant emphasis on molecular-genetic tools and in vivo physiology techniques applied to somatosensation.

Her collaborative network includes key partnerships with researchers in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (notably Jeffrey Morgan and Eric Darling) and extends to the Carney Institute for Brain Science, reflecting interdisciplinary approaches to neural circuit research.

Dr. Chirila maintains active laboratory operations studying how neural circuits transform sensory information, with particular focus on mechanotransduction and pain processing pathways that have direct relevance to clinical conditions including chronic pain and movement disorders.