Stephen Liberles
Harvard University, MA·Neuroscience
Hunger makes food smells irresistible, and thirst draws us toward drinks. Something in the body also warns the brain that we feel sick.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Genetics
Physiology
- Topics
olfaction
hunger
thirst
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Pinpoint where the NPY receptor NPY5R acts to let hunger boost attraction to food odors, testing whether it works in PVT-projecting piriform cortex neurons, using Cre-based Npy5r knockout and rescue mice.
- Monitor and manipulate NPY5R-expressing neurons with optogenetics and fiber photometry in Npy5r-p2a-Cre mice, to describe the neurons that respond to food odors.
- Compare how thirst and hunger differently control odor responses, using a new behavioral test of thirst-driven attraction to drink odors in mice.
- Test whether area postrema excitatory neurons in clusters 2 and 4, and the receptors they express, drive behavioral responses to a panel of nausea-inducing stimuli, using cell-specific genetic tools in mice.
- Measure how area postrema clusters 2 and 4 respond to blood-borne factors, genetically defined vagal inputs and nausea-inducing stimuli, using imaging in Cre knock-in mice.
- Investigate whether newly identified local inhibitory neurons in the area postrema suppress nausea or other area postrema-driven behaviors.
More about the research
These questions concern how the body's internal state is sensed and how it shapes behavior through specific brain circuits. One project in mice studies how hunger and thirst steer attention toward food and drink odors. The other maps the brain cells behind nausea.
Why it matters
Current anti-nausea drugs work unevenly across patients. Nausea is the main reason cancer patients cannot stick to their treatment. Identifying the area postrema cell types and receptors that cause nausea could point to new treatment targets. Understanding how hunger and thirst tune responses to smell could clarify how the body's internal state guides behavior.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
James M Otis
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Neuroscience
Track single posterior paraventricular thalamus neurons that project to the nucleus accumbens across heroin self-administration, extinction, and reinstatement in mice, using two-photon calcium imaging.
Giuseppe Giannotti
Washington State University, WA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Track the real-time activity of PVT neurons tagged with TRAP during spontaneous versus naloxone-precipitated withdrawal, using in vivo calcium imaging while rodents respond to heroin-linked cues.
Brian Ruyle
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Neuroscience·Early-career
Determine whether fentanyl acts before or after the synapse in the nucleus of the solitary tract, using a new transgenic MOR-Cre rat line with chemogenetics, optogenetics and fiber photometry to manipulate and record mu-opioid-receptor-expressing cells.
The school
Harvard University: 42 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 712 research doctorates a year.
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