Diversity Supplement to DP2AT011965

项目摘要 我们的现代食品环境，其广泛的能量密集，可口的食物和相关的 线索，被认为是与我们的生理相互作用，以促进食物的摄入。这导致了急剧增加 在过去的几十年里，美国的肥胖症。然而，大多数药物减肥 策略针对饱足通路，而不是感觉通路，因此在消除 环境/感官线索对食物摄入的影响。在这里，我们建议采取一种新的方法， 通过检查感觉和营养食物信号的神经整合来理解进食的驱动力。第一、 我们将创建感觉“记忆痕迹”--由离散的感觉刺激激活的神经元的功能图-- 确定激活或抑制这些回路如何影响食物偏好。接下来，我们将监测钙 动态在个别神经元，以揭示活动模式，整合感官和营养信息， 大脑在不同体重下的变化这些研究将揭示食物信息如何 被整合到大脑中以驱动进食行为，揭示了肥胖发展的新目标 治疗学我们正在申请额外一年的补充资金，以使亚历山德拉巴尔加斯女士，一个 第一代，低收入，拉丁裔美国公民继续对神经基础进行研究， 喂养行为，添加新的补充神经科学技术，她的技术剧目，并进一步 发展接收写作，演讲和网络技能。在这第二年，瓦格斯女士也将获得 宝贵的指导经验，因为她将帮助培训和指导Alhadeff实验室高中， 来自代表性不足的背景的本科生，因为他们踏上了自己的研究之旅。 我们相信，这额外一年的全面技术，职业发展和指导培训 会让瓦格斯女士在申请医学博士时有竞争优势博士神经科学项目将于秋季开始 2024.总的来说，这笔资金将促进巴尔加斯女士的职业生涯，一个非常令人印象深刻的和有才华的崛起。 科学家，让她有机会在神经科学和肥胖领域取得重大进展， NIH健康相关研究的多样性日益增加。

PROJECT SUMMARY Our modern food environment, with its widespread availability of energy-dense, palatable foods and associated cues, is thought to interact with our physiology to promote food intake. This has contributed to the drastic increase in obesity in the United States over the past several decades. However, most pharmacological weight loss strategies target satiation pathways, not sensory pathways, and therefore may be less effective at eliminating effects of environmental/sensory cues on food intake. Here we propose to take a novel approach to understanding the drive to eat by examining the neural integration of sensory and nutritive food signals. First, we will create sensory “engrams” – functional maps of neurons activated by discrete sensory stimuli – and determine how activating or inhibiting these circuits can influence food preference. Next, we will monitor calcium dynamics in individual neurons to reveal the activity patterns that integrate sensory and nutritive information in the brain across different body weights. These studies will reveal fundamental principles of how food information is integrated in the brain to drive feeding behavior, revealing new targets for the development of obesity therapeutics. We are applying for an additional year of supplemental funding to enable Ms. Alexandra Vargas, a first-generation, low income, Latinx U.S. citizen to continue to perform research on the neural underpinnings of feeding behavior, add new complementary neuroscience techniques to her technical repertoire, and further develop receive writing, presentation, and networking skills. In this second year, Ms. Vargas will also gain valuable mentorship experience, as she will help with training and mentoring Alhadeff lab high school and undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds as they embark on their own research journeys. We believe that this additional year of comprehensive technical, career development, and mentorship training will give Ms. Vargas a competitive edge as she applies for M.D./Ph.D. programs in neuroscience to start in fall 2024. Overall, this funding will facilitate the career of Ms. Vargas, an extremely impressive and talented rising scientist, giving her the opportunity to make major advances in the fields of neuroscience and obesity while increasing diversity in NIH health-related research.