Every day, people plan what to eat, decide between fats and sugars, and copy the food choices of friends—yet the brain cells driving these behaviours remain largely unknown. This research addresses that gap by recording the activity of individual neurons in monkeys as they make real food decisions, then comparing those signals to human brain scans performing the same tasks. The team focuses on three brain regions—amygdala, hypothalamus, and orbitofrontal cortex—that are central to reward and appetite, and uses clinically relevant nutrients rather than artificial treats. If successful, the work will identify the specific neural signals that encode a plan to consume a particular nutrient, and reveal how social cues reshape those signals. This is fundamental science: it does not promise a diet app or a new drug tomorrow. But understanding the basic neurophysiology of food planning and social learning could eventually inform treatments for obesity, where these circuits go awry. Similar single-neuron studies in primates have previously illuminated how the brain processes vision and memory, laying groundwork for therapies in blindness and Alzheimer’s disease.
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Optimal human food intake goes beyond reactive consumption and involves sophisticated behaviours that fine-tune food acquisition to our specific needs. Every day, we form decisions and consumption-plans to pursue our favourite foods, and model food choices from our social partners. This proposal develops a novel translational approach in primates to study the neural mechanisms for realistic food-intake behaviours involving planning, decision-making, and social learning. We perform monkey single-neuron recordings in amygdala, hypothalamus, and orbitofrontal cortex during feeding behaviour for clinically relevant nutrients, including fats and sugars. Separate research aims focus on two aspects of food intake: (1) planning and decision-making for specific nutrient rewards; (2) social influences on food choice. Human neuroimaging with identical foods and behaviours extends single-cell data to brain networks, functional connectivity, individual differences, and real-life eating phenotypes. We advance the field by identifying explicit neuronal signals that underlie formation and pursuit of nutrient consumption-plans; by formalizing behavioural conditions for social nutrient-reward learning; and by identifying neuronal signals that underlie such learning and related social influences on food choice. By studying sophisticated, primate-typical food intake in single neurons, neural systems, and behaviour, we aim to uncover basic neurophysiological mechanisms and lay foundations for clinical studies in obesity.
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