Diversity Supplement to DP2AT011965

项目总结 我们的现代食物环境，以及它广泛可获得的高能量、美味的食物和相关的 线索，被认为与我们的生理相互作用，以促进食物的摄取。这也是造成这一急剧增长的原因。 在过去的几十年里，美国的肥胖率有所下降。然而，大多数药理减肥 策略针对的是饱腹感途径，而不是感官途径，因此在消除 环境/感官暗示对食物摄入量的影响。在这里，我们建议采取一种新的方法来 通过检查感官和营养食物信号的神经整合来理解进食的动力。第一, 我们将创建感觉“印记”--由离散的感觉刺激激活的神经元的功能图--以及 确定激活或抑制这些回路如何影响人们对食物的偏好。接下来，我们将对钙进行监测 单个神经元的动力学以揭示整合感觉和营养信息的活动模式 不同体重的大脑。这些研究将揭示食品信息如何 整合在大脑中来驱动进食行为，揭示了肥胖发展的新靶点 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·巴尔加斯女士能够 第一代低收入拉丁裔美国公民将继续进行关于 进食行为，在她的技术曲目中增加了新的补充神经科学技术，并进一步 发展接发球写作、演示和网络交流的技能。在这第二年，巴尔加斯女士也将获得 宝贵的指导经验，因为她将帮助培训和指导阿尔哈德夫实验室高中和 来自代表性较低背景的本科生开始他们自己的研究之旅。 我们相信，这一年的全面技术、职业发展和导师培训 这将使巴尔加斯女士在申请秋季开始的神经科学医学/博士项目时拥有竞争优势 2024年。总体而言，这笔资金将促进巴尔加斯女士的职业生涯，这是一个非常令人印象深刻和有才华的上升 科学家，使她有机会在神经科学和肥胖领域取得重大进展，同时 美国国立卫生研究院与健康相关的研究日益多样化。

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.