TRR 134:  Ingestive Behaviour: Homeostasis and Reward

• Subject Area: Medicine ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 222193485

The incidence and prevalence of obesity continues to rise and is particularly observed in populations that are exposed to an unprecedented abundance of food. Against this background, it represents an urgent task to unravel the central nervous mechanisms that act to integrate the homeostatic and reward-associated neurocircuits encoding the behavioural portfolio relevant for food choice and intake. Based on the significant and exciting progress made in the first funding period, we will now expand our conceptual approach and efforts to systematically move towards a more system-based and translational research programme. To this end, we will position our goal to decipher the interaction between homeostatic and reward circuits in a broader context with regards to neuronal and functional interactions (level A). The analysis of this crosstalk will also include relevant models of social interaction and cue triggered/external eating behaviour in a more clinically oriented translational context (level B). Clearly defined intervention strategies to enable tackling these problems through neuromodulation, pharmacological means or targeted neurosurgical approaches will be employed (level C). Finally, human studies within the T-CRC will now benefit from a pheno- and genotypically well-characterized cohort in the Z2 project. The recruitment of normal individuals and individuals which are environmentally or genetically prone to altered eating behaviour is clearly essential for the experimental paradigms and targeted interventions of the next funding period.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transregios

Completed projects

• A01 - Defining insulin targets in control of feeding-associated reward behaviour (Project Head Brüning, Jens Claus )
• A02 - Dissecting the relationship between Insulin signalling and reward regulation (Project Head Scholz, Henrike )
• A03 - Metabolic modulation of a central reward circuit (Project Head Kloppenburg, Peter )
• A04 - Role of orexin signalling in energy homeostasis and reward processing (Project Heads Hausen, Anne Christine ;  Jöhren, Olaf )
• A05 - Dissecting the role of the nesfatin-1-oxytocin axis in the reward system (Project Heads Lehnert, Hendrik ;  Schulz, Carla )
• A06 - Inflammatory signalling in the hedonic regulation of feeding (Project Heads Schwaninger, Markus ;  Wunderlich, Frank Thomas )
• B01 - Circadian clocks and hedonic appetite regulation (Project Heads Meyhöfer, Sebastian Michael ;  Oster, Henrik )
• B02 - The interplay between hedonic and hormonal stimuli in the central regulation of energy and glucose metabolism in humans (Project Heads Klement, Johanna ;  Lehnert, Hendrik ;  Ott, Volker )
• B03 - Untersuchungen zur hormonellen Modulation dopaminerger Mechanismen von impulsivem Verhalten (Project Heads Stephan, Ph.D., Klaas Enno ;  Tittgemeyer, Marc )
• B04 - Cerebral energy homeostasis and incentive salience of food (Project Head Oltmanns, Kerstin )
• B05 - Exploring the effects of nesfatin-1 in reward-associated and compulsive-like eating (Project Heads Lehnert, Hendrik ;  Schulz, Carla )
• C01 - Brain systems involved in food intake - a neuroimaging approach (Project Heads Münte, Thomas F. ;  Schweiger, Ulrich ;  Tittgemeyer, Marc )
• C02 - Tracking the response to food items in subcortical brain structures by invasive electrophysiology in humans (Project Heads Münte, Thomas F. ;  Tronnier, Volker Martin )
• C03 - The influence of weight and weight loss on homeostatic, mnestic and reward-related brain circuits in older adults (Project Heads Brassen, Stefanie ;  Büchel, Christian )
• C05 - Effects of fasting and sleep deprivation on value-based and perceptual decision-making (Project Heads Peters, Jan ;  Schilbach, Leonhard )
• C06 - Using machine learning to identify multivariate neural determinants of food choice in the human brain (Project Heads Anders, Silke ;  Martinetz, Thomas ;  Meyhöfer, Sebastian Michael )
• C07 - Changing behaviour, changing brain, changing obesity (Project Head Park, Ph.D., So Young Q. )
• Z01 - Cenral Tasks (Project Head Lehnert, Hendrik )
• Z02 - Generation of a reference cohort with extreme eating behaviour (Project Heads Brabant, Georg ;  Brüning, Jens Claus ;  Kasten, Meike ;  Klein, Christine ;  Krämer, Ulrike M. )

• Applicant Institution: Universität zu Lübeck
• Co-Applicant Institution: Universität zu Köln
• Participating Institution: Max-Planck-Institut für Stoffwechselforschung
• Participating University: Universität Hamburg
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Hendrik Lehnert