OnDemand: June 2024 Grand Rounds - Neural Circuits of Cognitive Control of Feeding Behavior-Neural Circuits of Cognitive Control of Feeding Behavior

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Video Summary

Dr. Gloritsa Petrovich discussed how eating is controlled not only by hunger and satiety, but also by learned environmental cues that can trigger eating even when a person is full. Using rodent models, her lab studies how tones, contexts, and food-associated places become “cognitive cues” that drive food seeking and consumption through learning and memory.<br /><br />She described experiments showing that rats learn to associate cues with food, and later eat more in a satiated state when those cues are presented. The medial prefrontal cortex, basolateral amygdala, lateral hypothalamus, and orexin neurons form a key circuit in this process. Her work shows that the basolateral amygdala is activated early in learning, the medial prefrontal cortex is required to express cue-induced feeding, and orexin signaling in the prefrontal cortex helps drive this behavior.<br /><br />She also highlighted sex differences: female rats showed greater eating in some satiated or novel situations, and novel or uncertain contexts suppressed eating more strongly, with the medial prefrontal cortex involved in that inhibition. In the Q&A, she noted that estrogen may influence these effects, stress can interact with them, and that one therapeutic strategy may be to build new, healthier food-associated habits rather than simply trying to suppress cravings.

Keywords

cue-induced feeding

food seeking

satiation

rodent models

medial prefrontal cortex

basolateral amygdala

orexin signaling

sex differences

learning and memory