Exploring the Immune System’s Role in Mental Health
Lyonna Parise, Ph.D., a new assistant professor of biomedical science at Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, is researching the intricate conversation between the brain, the body and the immune system.
“Every year I spend in this field reinforces just how interconnected the body truly is,” said Parise, who previously trained in one of the world’s foremost labs studying the biology of resilience, and her recent NIH grant uses paradigms that examine stress resilience. She also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology and psychobiology, respectively, from Florida State University, completing her doctoral degree in behavioral and cellular neuroscience at Texas A&M University.
Following her doctoral research, Parise pursued postdoctoral training at the Brain and Body Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, N.Y.
Parise’s current work focuses heavily on the blood-brain barrier and the cellular environments that regulate what enters and exits the brain. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for developing more flexible and precise therapeutic strategies, especially as immune-targeting treatments rapidly evolve. Her research also emphasizes the role of individual differences, an aspect she said she believes is still widely misunderstood in discussions around mental health.
“Not everyone is the same, especially when it comes to conditions like depression,” Parise said. “Individualized medicine is going to allow us to personalize therapeutics.”
Parise’s background in studying complex behaviors gives her a distinct advantage in testing the effectiveness of new antidepressant and addiction-related treatments, she said, adding she is passionate about ensuring patients and the public understand the full-body nature of mental health. Rather than narrowing in on a single pathway, she encourages attention to whole-body signals.
Up Next: Parise said she plans to investigate how the peripheral immune system interacts with drugs of abuse, identifying commonalities that could guide future treatment approaches. “The gut, the brain and the immune system – they communicate constantly, and understanding those conversations is key,” she said.