Asya Rolls facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Asya Rolls
Asya Rolls in 2020
Born	Russia
Nationality	Israeli
Alma mater	The Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, Israel Israel Institute of Technology Weizmann Institute Stanford University
Known for	Brain representation and control of immunity and cancer
Scientific career
Fields	Psychoneuroimmunology
Institutions	Tel Aviv University
Doctoral advisor	Michal Schwartz Ofer Lider

Asya Rolls is an Israeli scientist who studies psychoneuroimmunology. This field looks at how your brain, mind, and immune system work together. She is a Professor at Tel Aviv University. Before 2024, she was a Professor at the Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Rolls leads a lab that explores how your nervous system affects your body's defenses (immune responses). Her work shows how the brain's reward system can help with the placebo effect. It also shows how the brain and immune system can team up to fight serious illnesses like cancer.

Early Life and Learning

Asya Rolls finished high school in Haifa, Israel, in 1993. She then studied Life Sciences at the Israel Institute of Technology. After getting her first degree, she continued her studies there for her Master's degree.

Later, she went to the Weizmann Institute in Israel for her PhD. She studied how the immune system affects the growth of new brain cells. She also looked at how the immune system helps the brain repair itself. Her research showed that certain parts of the immune system can either help or harm the growth of new brain cells. She finished her PhD in 2007.

Career and Discoveries

In 2008, Professor Rolls received a special scholarship called the Fulbright Scholarship. This allowed her to do more research at Stanford University in California. There, she studied how sleep affects the brain and memory. She found that if sleep is broken up after learning, it can make it harder to remember things. This was especially true if the sleep was interrupted too much.

She also found that preventing certain processes during sleep could stop people from remembering scary events. This showed how important sleep is for memory. Her team also studied how sleep affects the body's ability to heal. They found that not getting enough sleep could make it harder for important cells to help with bone marrow transplants.

In 2012, Professor Rolls became a group leader at the Israel Institute of Technology. She now leads the Rolls Lab, where she explores the amazing connection between the brain and the immune system. Her lab focuses on how our feelings and thoughts can change how our immune system works. They use special tools to study how brain cells affect the immune system.

Brain's Reward System and Immunity

Professor Rolls was one of the first scientists to show a link between the brain's reward system and the immune system. She became interested in this because of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is when you feel better just because you believe a treatment will work. She found that activating the brain's reward system could make the immune system stronger. This happened when the body was fighting off bacteria.

She then looked at how the brain's reward system might help fight serious illnesses. Her team found that activating this system could make tumors smaller. This was a big discovery, showing that the brain can play a role in fighting illnesses.

Studying Immune Cells in the Brain

Professor Rolls has also found new ways to study immune cells in the brain. She uses a method called CyTOF to look at many different types of immune cells at once. Using this method, her team found new types of immune cells in the brain. They also discovered that after not getting enough sleep, certain immune cells can enter the brain. This shows how sleep affects the brain's immune environment.

Brain's Immune Memories

In a recent study, Professor Rolls and her team showed that the brain can "remember" immune responses. They found that certain brain cells become active during inflammation. If these cells are activated again, they can bring back the same immune response. This discovery helps us understand how our thoughts and feelings might affect our physical health.

Professor Rolls also came up with the idea of "immunoception." This is the brain's way of watching and controlling the immune system. She suggests that the brain stores information about our immune system. This information is shared between the brain and immune cells in the body.

Awards and Honors

• 2017 Howard Hughes Medical Investigator-Wellcome International Research Scholar
• 2017 Krill Prize - Wolf Foundation
• 2015-2019 FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence
• 2017 Adelis Brain Research Award
• 2010 NARSAD Young Investigator Award
• 2009 Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship
• 2009 Clore Foundation's Women in Science Award
• 2008 Fulbright Scholar

Selected Media

• 2019 TEDx Technion - Understanding the Brain's Role in Immunity
• 2018 Scientific American Article - Could Brain Stimulation Slow Cancer?
• 2013 Scientific American Mind Article - Faulty Sleep Mechanisms Might Cause Trauma to Linger
• 2012 Nature News Article “To Sleep, Perchance to Forget Fears”
• 2011 Los Angeles Times “ Fragmented Sleep May Impair Memory, Learning”