Reversing chronic stress effects through life-style interventions
Motives and modulators of human decision making
Did we eat spaghetti for lunch because we saw our colleague eat spaghetti? What drives a risk decision? How can our breakfast impact our decisions throughout the day? Research from different disciplines such as economics, psychology and neuroscience have attempted to investigate the motives and modulators of human decision making. Human decisions can be flexibly modulated by the different experiences we have in our daily lives, at the same time, bodily processes, such as metabolism can also impact economic behavior. These modulations can occur through our social networks, through the impact of our own behavior on the social environment, but also simply by the food we have eaten. Here, I will present a series of recent studies from my lab in which we shed light on the psychological, neural and metabolic motives and modulators of human decision making.
Central representations of protein availability regulating appetite and body weight control
Dietary protein quantity and quality greatly impact metabolic health via evolutionary-conserved mechanisms that ensure avoidance of amino acid imbalanced food sources, promote hyperphagia when dietary protein density is low, and conversely produce satiety when dietary protein density is high. Growing evidence support the emerging concept of protein homeostasis in mammals, where protein intake is maintained within a tight range independently of energy intake to reach a target protein intake. The behavioural and neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying these adaptations are unclear and form the focus of our research.