Timothy H. Moran, Ph.D.
||Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
||618 Ross Building
||Jennifer Albertz 2011
Our overall research program is aimed at identifying the roles of various neural signaling pathways in the controls of food intake and body weight and understanding how these pathways may be disrupted in obesity. One approach involves the identification of the neural representation of meal related satiety signals. Multiple feedback signaling pathways are activated by food ingestion and gastrointestinal presence of digestion products. We are examining how signals from multiple sites and stimulus modalities are integrated in the activity of individual vagal afferent fibers and within specific brain nuclei as expressed in patterns of electrophysiological activity, c-Fos activation and mRNA expression of peptide signals. A second approach involves the identification of interactions between peripheral, within meal, satiety signals and hypothalamic peptide systems involved in overall energy balance and how these interactions change in differing metabolic states. We are also examining how exercise alters hypothalamic signaling in ways that reduce food intake and body weight. Finally, we are using viral gene transfer approaches to altering hypothalamic signaling. These experiments focus on identifying how changes in gene expression can either cause or ameliorate obesity.
- Schwartz, G.J. and Moran, T.H. Leptin and NPY have opposing modulatory effects on nucleus of the solitary tract neurophysiological responses to gastric loads: implications for the controls of food intake. Endocrinology, 143: 3779-84, 2002.
- Bi, S., Scott, K.A., Kopin, A.S. and Moran, T.H.: Differential roles for cholecystokinin-A receptors in energy balance in rats and mice. Endocrinology, 145: 3873-80, 2004.
- Moran, T.H., Smedh U., Kinzig, K.P., Scott, K.A., Knipp, S. and Ladenheim, E.E.: Peptide YY (3-36) inhibits gastric emptying and produces acute reductions in food intake in rhesus monkeys. American Journal of Physiology, 288: R384-R388, 2005.
- Ladenheim, E.E., Emond, M. and Moran, T.H.: Leptin enhances feeding suppression and neural activation produced by systemically administered bombesin. American Journal of Physiology, 289: 473-477, 2005.
- Bi, S., Scott, K.A., Hyun, J., Ladenheim, E.E. and Moran, T.H.: Voluntary running wheel activity prevents hyperphagia and obesity in OLETF rats: role of hypothalamic signaling. Endocrinology, 146: 1676-1685, 2005.