Dr. Daria Jensen | Exploring the Brain-Body Connection of Diet, Obesity, and Stress Across the Lifespan

Maintaining cognitive health becomes increasingly important as longevity rises, leading to a higher prevalence of cognitive disorders, including dementia. Obesity is a highly multicausal but modifiable risk factor for dementia and is often linked to lower diet quality and overconsumption. In this talk, I will explore how lifestyle factors, such as diet and the impact of prolonged perceived stress, relate to brain health and its neural correlates. I will highlight MRI studies on subcortical hypothalamus networks and hippocampal connectivity related to stress, diet quality, and obesity. Additionally, I will present findings on neural correlates involved in reward-enhanced food-associated memory in overweight adults. Finally, I will discuss the potential of dietary intervention studies to modulate gut-brain axis communication and their role in preventing age-related diseases. Overall, these studies have implications for developing new treatment options for obesity and stress-related disorders and suggest that targeting subcortical circuits could offer promising new treatment opportunities.