Dr. Foster is a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Principal Investigator of the Lab for Hot and Cool Research, where she studies the effect of temperature and heat flows on body, mind and mood. Currently, we are dealing with an epidemic of chronic neuropsychiatric diseases with an inflammatory basis: most conspicuously long COVID, depression and Alzheimer disease. Growing evidence indicates that brief exposure to temperature extremes, either hot or cold, have potential to be safe, effective, nonpharmacological treatments for these neuroinflammatory disorders, however we don’t understand how this works, or how to select who should get what treatment. There is also a lack of understanding of how sex differences impact these issues.
Dr. Foster’s research goal is to better understand the mechanisms underlying hot and cold exposures to guide development of temperature therapeutics and make them accessible to diverse populations.