Rate My Professor Kevin Cummings

Cummings directs an NIH-funded laboratory focused on central neural control of breathing, cardiovascular function, autonomic activity, and sleep-wake states, particularly the roles of brainstem serotonin (5-HT) and orexin neurons in neonatal development. Research elucidates how serotonergic defects precipitate apnea, bradycardia, and hypotension during sleep, compromising arousal and autoresuscitation from hypoxia—key factors in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Additional projects probe orexin's modulation of chemoreflexes and ventilatory responses, influenced by sex and estrous phase; serotonin's contributions to neurogenic hypertension; and its implications for heart failure. Techniques include polysomnography in freely behaving rodents, DREADDs for chemogenetic manipulation, focal microinjections, and transcriptomics. Select publications are Ben Musa et al., 'Orexin facilitates the peripheral chemoreflex via corticotropin releasing hormone neurons projecting to the nucleus of the solitary tract' (Journal of Neuroscience, 2024); Cummings et al., 'Altered 5-HT2A/C receptor binding in the medulla oblongata in the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): Part II' (Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 2024); Ben Musa et al., 'The effect of orexin on the hypoxic ventilatory response of female rats is greatest in the active phase during diestrus' (Journal of Applied Physiology, 2023); Spinieli et al., 'A serotonin-deficient rat model of neurogenic hypertension: influence of sex and sympathetic vascular tone' (Journal of Neurophysiology, 2022); and Spinieli et al., 'Orexin facilitates the ventilatory and behavioral responses of rats to hypoxia' (American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 2022).