Shameless plug 1: looking for someone who could make me some intro music for the podcast

Shameless plug 2: looking for more scientists to interview!
I know it’s a really challenging time, but you never know when a little time could have a big impact down the road!

We had a really fun conversation about her unconventional path to science, how her projects are contributing towards improving human health and we demystify the concept of indirect funds.

Enjoy and please share with your friends and colleagues!

Thank you!

Thank you!

There are lots of other interesting results and tidbits in the full manuscript and we are excited to hear your feedback!

We are very excited about the idea that the insular cortex has direct access to information about internal states, and in the future we hope to understand more about how the insula integrates this internal state information with exteroceptive information to control behavior.

Lastly, although we find that most LepR connections are local, they make a projection to the BLA, which also controls latency to pellet retrieval in an operant learning task.

Moreover, we found that administering leptin reshapes the transcriptome in the insula, and particularly in neurons that have previously been associated with food intake control. Leptin also reshapes overall insular cortex neural activity in response to feeding.

We also found that this effect is specific to food restriction compared to water restriction, suggesting that LepR neurons receive information specifically about hunger states.

What do these neurons encode? Through a series of calcium imaging experiments we found that LepR neurons encode feeding bouts, but they are particularly responsive to hunger states, and alter their responsivity to food during food restriction.

This is quite consistent with what we know about the insular cortex, where broad inhibition impacts learned feeding behaviors, but not normal food intake. (See Stern et al 2021, Livneh 2017)

Interestingly, activation & inhibition of LepR neurons broadly had little impact on homeostatic food intake. However, it DID decrease 📉 pellets retrieved in an operant learning task and induced place aversion, suggesting that LepR is responsible for regulating learned feeding

Many previous studies assumed that cortical LepR neurons are nonfunctional. We show that these LepR neurons are responsive to leptin and become more excitable. And what about behavior?

We identified a small population of leptin receptor (LepR) neurons in the insula that we hypothesized might receive direct information from the periphery about hunger states.

The insular cortex has long been hypothesized as an interoceptive hub. But how does information about bodily states arrive at the insula? Some studies suggest that there may be direct interoceptive input, but how?

Still ironing out some kinks, like getting onto Apple Podcasts, but we have two more episodes coming soon, with Ya’el Courtney and Rachel Marsh. Please share, especially with your non-scientists friends and family. I would love to keep interviewing, so please keep in touch if interested!

You can listen to Episode 1 with Dr. Paul Bieniasz here. We discuss a wide range of topics, including his research on SARS-CoV-2, how to restore trust in science, and why basic research is still necessary.

open.spotify.com/episode/2pWn...