Our growth and survival depends on our adaptive ability to seek out and consume food. However, changes in eating behaviors are common to many mental disorders, whether due to changes in motivation from the illness, or as a potential side effect of its pharmacotherapy.

Of course, eating disorders (EDs) are defined by maladaptive eating. Indeed, for the millions of individuals that will battle an ED (such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and avoidant restrictive food intake disorder), food-avoidance and -seeking have become debilitating and potentially life-threatening behaviors.

If we are to improve treatments and identify novel therapeutics for relapse-prone EDs (or for unwanted changes in motivation more broadly), it is absolutely critical that we understand the brain circuits, states, and signaling molecules that calibrate feeding and interpret food-related contextual cues.

The hippocampus (HPC) is critically involved in memory and the contextual regulation of motivated behaviors, which includes processing food-related cues, but how contextual signals of the HPC are integrated and processed in subcortical brain systems to scale motivated behaviors isn’t well known.

With its broad HPC afferents and robust targeting of hypothalamic networks, the highly conserved lateral septum (LS) is well-positioned to deconstruct HPC activity for regulation of context-dependent motivated behavior, including feeding. However, the LS is a heterogeneous and complex inhibitory network, whose many functions are largely unexplored…

Leveraging single-nucleus RNA sequencing, mouse genetics, cell-type-specific circuit mapping and manipulation, ex vivo slice electrophysiology, optical imaging of active cells, and rigorous behavioral testing and analyses, my ongoing postdoctoral research has identified a  unique neuropeptidergic cell-type within the HPC-LS-hypothalamus network that calibrates context-dependent eating behaviors. We are nearing submission of this work for publication (preprint soon), and I am excited to update on the specifics of these findings!

In my future lab (TBD!), I will continue to use and build on these techniques to study the HPC-LS-hypothalamus network in the adaptive control of context-dependent motivation, such as feeding. 

If any of this sounds interesting, please consider me for a talk or presentation, and please be on the lookout for my faculty application materials!