Our NIH R01 proposal, based on Lucas' recent findings, adds to emerging work on brain-body physiology to advance strategies for improving health and blend our team’s expertise in neuroendocrinology and neurocircuits. He is using state-of-the-art methods to pursue hypothesis-driven questions to decode a robust neuroendocrine circuit that controls two essential processes—urination and defecation. Both functions degrade with aging, especially in older women. Eventually, we wish to translate these preclinical studies to mitigate the loss of pelvic control in the older adult US population.