Marc Schneeberger Pane, PhD

The Schneeberger Pané laboratory investigates how the brain senses, adapts to, and ultimately controls changes in whole-body metabolic state. Our research focuses on the cellular and physiological mechanisms that enable communication between the brain and peripheral organs, with particular emphasis on neurovascular plasticity, metabolic disease, and brain-body homeostasis.

A central theme of our work is that the cerebral vasculature is not simply a passive network that supplies oxygen and nutrients to the brain. Instead, we study brain vessels as dynamic regulators of neural function that remodel in response to physiological and metabolic challenges. We are particularly interested in understanding how this adaptive plasticity changes during obesity and other chronic metabolic states, and how vascular remodeling influences blood-brain barrier integrity, cerebral perfusion, neuronal activity, and behavior.

Our laboratory combines whole-brain tissue clearing and light-sheet microscopy, advanced vascular imaging, functional ultrasound, mouse genetics, molecular and cellular approaches, metabolic phenotyping, and behavioral neuroscience to investigate these questions across multiple biological scales. This allows us to connect changes in systemic physiology with cellular remodeling of the neurovascular unit, alterations in distributed brain circuits, and ultimately whole-organism physiology and behavior.

A major focus of our current research is understanding why obesity has profound consequences for brain health. We are investigating how chronic metabolic stress produces region-specific remodeling of the cerebral vasculature and whether these changes contribute to cognitive dysfunction and accelerated brain aging. By identifying mechanisms that determine whether the neurovascular system successfully adapts or becomes dysfunctional, we aim to uncover pathways that promote brain resilience or vulnerability during metabolic disease.

More broadly, our work seeks to establish a framework in which metabolic regulation emerges from interactions among neurons, vascular cells, glia, and peripheral organs, rather than from neuronal circuits alone. Through this approach, we aim to uncover fundamental principles governing brain-body communication and identify mechanisms through which physiological adaptations become maladaptive during obesity, aging, and disease.