Obesity is influenced by genetics and diet and has wide ranging comorbidities, including
anxiety and depressive disorders. Outbred heterogeneous stock (HS) rats are used for fine …

Eating palatable foods reduces behavioral and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA)
axis responses to stress–an idea referred to by the colloquial term “comfort” food. To study …

The supramammillary nucleus (SuM) has an emerging role in appetite control. We have
shown that the rat SuM is activated during hunger or food anticipation, or by ghrelin …

We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the extent to which dietary habits are malleable
early on in childhood and later in life. We implement two treatments one that targets what …

Hyperpalatable foods are highly pleasurable and possess a heightened capacity to
stimulate eating. Adolescents appear especially vulnerable to hyperpalatable foods. These …

Maternal deprivation (MD) in rodents is used to simulate human-infant early life stress, which
leads to neural, hormonal, and behavioral alterations. Palatable food (PF) can reduce the …

Many pre-clinical models of binge-like eating involve predictable, scheduled, access to a
palatable diet high in fat (HF), where access may be preceded by anticipatory behaviour …

Obesity is influenced by genetics and diet and has wide ranging comorbidities, including
anxiety and depressive disorders. Outbred heterogeneous stock (HS) rats are used for fine …

Appetite, originally evolved to ensure we consume enough of diverse nutrients to survive
famines, has lost its survival advantage in our modern society, where food is plentiful. The …

We evaluate the malleability of dietary habits early on in life with two interventions targeting
low income families with very young children. Both interventions were conducted over a …