How does our gut sense help us navigate our emotional and food landscapes?
Our mission is to define the neural circuits of the gut brain connection using a complementary and comprehensive set of techniques to interrogate gut sensory transduction.
The brain-to-gut communication pathway
Instinctively, we know that how we feel influences how we feel about our food. However, the neural circuits underlying this connection are unknown. Our laboratory is pioneering research to understand how the brain communicates to the gut to influence how we sense our food. By mapping this connection, we aim to unlock new ways to understand how stress and mental well-being impacts gut health. This opens the possibility of a future where we can precisely target these brain-to-gut signals to improve our emotional relationship with food!
The hidden “memory” of your gut
What if cells in your gut could “remember” past experiences? We are exploring a specialized population of gut sensory cells, known as neuropod cells, that live longer than their neighbors and hold the potential to record what our mothers ate while we developed. This research could reveal an entirely new way that our bodies learn about food. By understanding this “gut memory” we might one day be able to influence our food preferences and even our sensitivity to certain foods, paving the way for personalized approaches to nutrition and health.
Decoding our gut language to shape nutrition
For too long our we have focused on simple calorie counting. Our laboratory is working to understand how our gut senses and communicates the gratifying quality of our food. We are deciphering the "language" of specialized gut cells, known as neuropod cells, that sense and rapidly tell your brain what you are eating and how satisfying it is. This research has the potential to transform how we think about food, leading to a call to re-design the Nutrition Facts label to reflect what your gut is trying to say about your food. Imagine a future where you can make food choices based on your body's own wisdom!