Dr Marc Tittgemeyer | Food Intake in Control of Cognition or Cognition in Control of Food Intake? A bottom-up perspective on cognitive processes underlying food intake regulation

Maintenance of energy homeostasis, i.e. the balance between caloric intake and energy expenditure, has to be maintained in a tight range to ensure health and survival. To physiologically ensure homeostasis, our organisms constantly has to integrate information about the internal state with external environmental cues to adapt behavioral and autonomic responses. To that end, throughout evolution a sophisticated neuronal network has developed that integrates the various streams of information to precisely control food intake, energy expenditure, and substrate flux across different peripheral organs. Dysregulation of the underlying homeostatic circuits causes prevalent diseases, such as obesity and type-2 diabetes mellitus, which are on an epidemic rise in industrialized societies.

I discuss how the brain processes external sensory and internal homeostatic signals to initiate –dynamically– behavioral and physiological responses. Here, a focus will be on circuit-level models of metabolic mechanisms. In this regard, emphasis will be on those biological pathways that mediate individual differences in behavior implicated in the control of body weight and energy homeostasis. Accordingly, I explore the role of cognitive processes underlying food intake regulation.

Poster