RESEARCH

Overview

In the Parent Lab our main focus is to understand how brain areas involved in cognition control eating behaviors.

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Memory of a recently eaten meal can serve as a powerful mechanism for controlling future eating behavior because it likely outlasts most physiological signals generated by a meal and regulates homeostatic (i.e., need-based) and hedonic (i.e., pleasure/reward-based) feeding.

Our research suggests that hippocampal neurons are critical for forming a memory of a meal and inhibiting future intake, both in terms of delaying the initiation of the next meal and limiting the amount consumed during that next meal. Our findings also suggest that obesity disrupts these processes, thereby causing further overeating and exacerbating the obesity.

Our research involves measures of rodent behavior, manipulations of the brain (neuropharmacology, optogenetics and genetics) and molecular and biochemical research strategies (PCR, biochemistry, immunohistochemistry) to measure the impact of ingestion on the brain.