Michael Shoykhet, M.D.,PhD

Instructor of Pediatrics

Critical Care Medicine
Developmental Biology and Genetics Unit
Shoykhet Lab
 

Dr. Shoykhet is an attending in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the St. Louis Children's Hospital.  He is also a member of the Developmental Biology and Genetics Unit.  He is a recent transplant to St. Louis from Pittsburgh, PA where he completed the Medical Scientist Training Program, Residency, and Fellowship.  His professional interests focus on Neuroscience as it applies to Pediatric Critical Care.  He is also a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the Society for Critical Care Medicine.

Brain injury in cardiac arrest is regionally heterogeneous despite a global hypoxic-ischemic insult.  What are the determinants of selective vulnerability or resistance to injury in the brain?  Dr. Shoykhet's research focuses on understanding how neurons in specific, behaviorally-relevant circuits are affected by hypoxia, ischemia, and reperfusion during development.  Using the rodent somatosensory system, Dr. Shoykhet's laboratory employs neurophysiologic recordings in animals, immunohistochemical analyses in stained tissue and behavior paradigms to study the impact of asphyxial cardiac arrest on thalamocortical circuitry and corresponding animal behavior.  The long-term goal of the laboratory is to establish the mechanistic basis for selective vulnerability of defined neuronal population to hypoxic-ischemic insult and to employ this knowledge in designing targeted neuroprotective and rehabilitative strategies applicable to human survivors of cardiac arrest.