Metabolic and Endocrine Control of Behavior

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Our abilities to see, hear, smell and touch are all mediated by sensory systems in which the stimuli and the receptors are well understood. For example, vision results from light entering the eye and impinging on receptors located in the retina. While it is known that environmental events, such as changes in temperature and food availability, have major effects upon the behavior of mammals, little is known about the stimuli and receptors that mediate these influences on the brain. Dr. Schneider will investigate this important problem. She has found that reproductive, maternal, and temperature regulatory behaviors are controlled by the availability of metabolic energy, or the chemical fuels that derive from sugars and fats. This supply of metabolic fuels is influenced by diet, body fat stores, and the energy required to keep warm, find food and carry out other processes necessary for life. Dr. Schneider will now identify the nature and location of sensory detectors of metabolic energy availability. She will infuse drugs that inhibit specific metabolic pathways to examine effects on neuroendocrine systems controlling each of the three specific regulatory behaviors mentioned above. Her results will provide a broad and integrated view of the relation between metabolic, neural and hormonal signals generated by changes in energy supply and demand. Moreover, these results will have important clinical relevance since they should shed light on phenomena such as infertility in women who limit their energy intake. Infertility is common in professional athletes, ballet dancers and women with eating disorders such as anorexia nervous. It also occurs in normal women who diet and/or participate in recreational sports. Dr. Schneider's work will help elucidate how these changes in fuel availability influence the nervous system to regulate behavioral and physiological responses.