We need a better understanding of what drives us to eat

What started as research into how mice seek food evolved into something entirely different. After over five years of work, my project was published in Nature Portfolio Neuroscience, revealing neural circuits that make mice prioritize movement towards safety over eating and other needs.

You can read the paper here.

It's the opposite of what we expected, but this just reflects the complexity of the brain. During my bachelor's degree, I always said that I was interested in everything except neuroscience because I thought it was too complicated. And yet that is exactly what motivates me today. Here I am, studying neuroscience! We still don’t fully understand the brain and how it works in a healthy state. Therefore, to understand brain diseases, we first need to understand how the brain functions normally.

The brain is like a huge puzzle and we're looking at these tiny pieces. The fact that we're still only starting to understand our brain is what drives my curiosity.

It was my fascination with neural circuits that led me to the CBMR's International Postdoc Programme. There, I joined a hybrid project between the Clemmensen Group at the CBMR and the Kiehn Lab in the Department of Neuroscience to investigate hypothalamic circuits that send signals to the movement areas of the midbrain.

We need a better understanding of what drives us to eat. Genetic data shows us that obesity is a brain disease. However, although there are some therapies that target the brain, we don't know why they work. Without a clear understanding of these baseline circuits in healthy states, it is very difficult to grasp how these therapies are functioning properly.

In one experiment, we had a hungry mouse seeking Nutella. A small air puff above the food was enough to alert the mouse, and it turned around and went back to its shelter. We could see these neurons firing in exactly those moments when something signals the mouse to be alert and prioritize safety-seeking movements.

So, we found that when these neurons are active, mice are less likely to go to food or explore another mouse and more likely to go towards safety. This revealed something fundamental about the split-second survival decisions and movements that determine whether a mouse survives.

Now, as an Assistant Professor in the Kiehn Lab, I'm exploring how these circuits might relate to movement disorders, while maintaining my fascination with how the brain prioritizes competing needs in real-time.

It has been wonderful to be a part of CBMR's collaborative environment that creates conditions for breakthrough discoveries, even when they're the opposite of what you expect. The resources are fantastic. I took courses that helped me to reflect on my career and day-to-day work, improve my mentoring skills, and attend workshops on communication at the workplace.