Why Did I Eat That? Obesity and the Neuroscience of Food Craving
Tuesday, October 13, 2020, 2:00 pm EDT
While urges to eat are regulated by hunger, our need for energy, and our sense of satiety or fullness, they’re also strongly influenced by sights, sounds, and smells associated with food. Dr. Ferrario’s research, which draws on concepts in addiction and learning, explores the neurobiological mechanisms of cue-triggered food craving and how these are influenced by consumption of sugary, fatty, “junk-food” diets and individual susceptibility to obesity. She will discuss how alterations in excitatory nerve-cell transmission within the brain's reward pathway influences food craving, and how these alterations relate to eating behaviors.
Watch webinar recording:
Please use #BBRFWebinar when sharing or posting about our Meet the Scientist Webinars on social media.
Dr. Ferrario joined the Pharmacology Department faculty in 2012 and is an external member of the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center of the John B. Pierce Lab at Yale. She became an Associate Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2016 and is currently serving as the Pharmacology Department Faculty Ally for Diversity and is a board member of the Conference on Winter Brain Research. Her lab’s primary focus is on examining obesity-related changes in striatal function and motivated behaviors such as food-seeking and eating, as well as similarities and differences between alterations in motivation driving obesity and drug addiction.
Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., serves as the President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the largest private funder of mental health research grants. Dr. Borenstein developed the Emmy-nominated public television program “Healthy Minds,” and serves as host and executive producer of the series. The program, broadcast nationwide, is available online, and focuses on topics in psychiatry in order to educate the public, reduce stigma and offer a message of hope. Dr. Borenstein served as Editor-in-Chief of Psychiatric News, the newspaper of the American Psychiatric Association from 2012 - 2023.
Dr. Borenstein is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and serves as the Chair of the Section of Psychiatry at the Academy. He also has served as the President of the New York State Psychiatric Association. Dr. Borenstein earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard and his medical degree at New York University.
