Dr. Kanoski 0:00
Definitely fruit. I believe it was an orange and a blueberry, if I had to guess.
Peter 0:10
Yeah, you can open up your eyes. Perfect. It was a bit of a fruit salad. Some of it had fallen out but you got the tangerine and the blueberry exactly what it was the reason why these fruits were chosen, I was looking into some studies to see the effects of certain types of food on cognitive decline. And there have been studies that have shown that strawberry and spinach can be effective as a long term dietary intervention.
Dr. Kanoski 0:33
I actually have an orange tree in my yard in Los Angeles. We have apples oranges all the time, your own oranges.
Peter 0:52
Hi and welcome back to the Gastronauts podcast. My name is Peter and I’ll be your host. Here at Gastronauts, we are committed to exploring communication throughout the body with a focus on the crosstalk between gut and brain. We invite speakers in this field to share both their research and their life journeys. So come join me as we explore the steps that go into shaping a scientist on the astronauts podcast.
Today we have Dr. Scott Kanoski, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California. Dr. Kanoski completed his PhD in Psychology at Purdue University in Dr. Davidson’s lab, his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Grill’s lab and was recruited for a faculty position at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on neural systems that control feeding behavior. And in particular, Dr. Kanoski is interested in studying how dietary and metabolic factors can contribute to cognitive decline, as well as how environmental cues can play a role in controlling feeding.
Could you tell us how you got into studying how consumptions of sugars and fats can be linked with memory deficits?
Dr. Kanoski 2:25
Sure, this was actually part of my dissertation work when I was at Purdue University. There were a few papers coming out at that time showing links between consuming unhealthy diets, so what we would consider to be a quote, Western diet, that’s high in saturated fatty acids and sugar, with cognitive impairments. And what I wanted to do at that time was trying to understand the specific nature of those cognitive impairments that were associated with consuming these unhealthy diets that many of us- I’m guilty of times- myself consume. And it turns out that the hippocampus is a canary in the coal mine in the sense that it’s very sensitive to dietary and metabolic perturbations. So you see, even after consuming these diets for a very short period of time, you see deficits and hippocampal-dependent memory tasks. And this is referring to things like remembering what we did yesterday, or remembering how to get to work. These are memory processes that rely on this brain structure. And more recently in my lab, we’ve been trying to isolate the specific dietary factors that are causing this because a Western diet is different from a healthy diet and in many ways, and we’ve found a role for sugar independent of elevated fat content. However, the effects of sugar on hippocampal dependent memory deficits appear to be exacerbated during early life periods of development, so this is referring to the the juvenile and adolescent phase. So if you consume excess sugar during these periods, at least in rodent models, we see long lasting deficits into adulthood.
Peter 3:59
There was a lot of information there. I want to unpack here a little bit. The first thing I was wondering was how did you stumble on the hippocampus? I know the brain is a very complex region, when you looked at a dietary intervention or a Western diet, did you look at the whole brain and you looked at particular regions that lit up that showed you to focus on the hippocampus? Or did you know-
Dr. Kanoski 4:20
We actually follow the behavior. So psychology is my background. And I tend to start with the behavior and then break it down and get into the brain after that. And what we saw was impairments in memory tasks when animals would consume these diets that were similar to what you would see if you lesion the hippocampus, so starting from the behavior, we noticed a pattern. And then after that, you can look into the brain and try to understand what’s changing in the hippocampus that may be causing these deficits? Yeah.
Peter 4:47
Okay, so behavior was the main focus, and then you went to the brain regions? Interesting. And then the other thing that you had mentioned was that perhaps the brain is particularly vulnerable to these diets at a period in adolescence. Could you tell us some more about how you got into that research or how you identified that?
Dr. Kanoski 5:00
Yeah, we started this project because we thought it was important with regards to human health because if you look at who’s consuming the most sugar, at least in the United States, the highest sugar consumers are children, so they can consume up to 15 to 20% of their entire calories can come from sugar in younger populations. As we get older, we tend to consume a bit less sugar. That was one of the reasons we were interested in studying this developmental period. Just looking at what ages humans are actually consuming sugar in excess.
Peter 5:36
Do you feel that just because we consume more at this adolescent period? If we consumed more at a later period in life, would we see the same effects or is it just because the brain is so susceptible during that period?
Dr. Kanoski 5:49
Yeah, I take caution and extending our Roden data directly to humans. But in rodents, if sugars consumed in excess during adulthood, we don’t see the same pattern of memory deficits.
Peter 6:00
Interesting, well, I guess I’m past that point in my life. So, there’s no hope for me now.
And the other thing that you mentioned was your first interest in the hippocampus started in your graduate studies, your research has really stayed focused on the impact of diet on memory, from your work as a graduate student, to your postdoc to your work as a PI now. How have you been able to navigate the field of academia so that you’re able to distinguish your work that you’re doing now from the work that you’ve done previously.
Dr. Kanoski 6:30
One of the things that we look at that I think is unique in the hippocampus world is, in addition to looking at how the brain is influenced by dietary factors, we also try to understand how the hippocampus controls feeding behavior. And this is a brain region that’s not traditionally linked with the control of feeding behavior. But it is the case that our memory function influences our eating behavior. So we have to remember where we found the food what we consumed, and these memory processes powerfully influencing what we eat, and our overall energy regulation. So that’s one of the things that I think we’re somewhat unique in studying [which] is trying to link memory processes to the control of food intake and bodyweight regulation.
Peter 7:11
I can definitely see how when we were more of a scavenging or a hunter-gatherer society, it’s important to have this memory of where we got the food. And this context will help us define where we’re going to get food easily. Now that food is so ubiquitous, and our rates of obesity are so high, where do you see this kind of translating?
Dr. Kanoski 7:29
Yeah, that’s a good point. So we we don’t have to try really hard to find food now. But what the hippocampus is important for is detecting and interpreting internal cues, not just for navigating the external world. For example, if you lesion the hippocampus in rats, they’re not able to use different levels of food restriction as discriminative cues for some kind of event. It could be a foot shock or a food pellet. And then if you look at humans that have damage to the hippocampus, they also seem to be insensitive to hunger and satiety cues. So if dietary factors lead to hippocampal dysfunction in humans, this may lead to overeating potentially. If individuals are less sensitive to hunger and satiety cues, the default behavioral strategy is generally to eat more and not less.
Peter 8:18
You mentioned these internal cues. Could you give us some example of what specific internal cues? And you said the hippocampus leverages both the external and internal cues. Do we have an idea of how this turns into behavior how this is integrated?
Dr. Kanoski 8:31
We think the neurons in the hippocampus are receiving information about the external world, and then also about the internal world as it relates to hunger and satiety. And then it’s taking these different categories of information and interpreting them to appropriately guide behavior.
Peter 8:49
And are there specific molecules or hormones or mediators of these effects?
Dr. Kanoski 8:53
There are the hippocampus is sensitive and receiving information to a lot of feeding relevant systems. These are hormones, for example, that are secreted during feeding or immediately prior to feeding. Many of these signals act directly in the hippocampus. We think that some of these endocrine signals coming from the periphery from the gastrointestinal tract are in part how this internal information about hunger and satiety is communicated to the hippocampus.
Peter 9:22
Interesting. Could you walk us through, in your head, the process of what happens when we’re thinking about eating, or when we’re consuming food and how- I know this is a huge concept- but how do you think about when we’re going about eating? What factors are involved in signaling to the brain and from the gut as well?
Dr. Kanoski 9:40
We tend to eat based on fixed patterns. Most of us we don’t generally graze throughout the day until we’re full. So the meal is a very important component of how much intake we generally consume. And you can manipulate how much people consume by doing blatant manipulations like having a larger portion size, people tend to eat more. So a lot of our meal regulation is controlled by external factors; we eat three times a day, for example, we eat what’s on the plate. But what’s important is the decisions in terms of what we eat, I think is a very important determinant of how much people consume.
Peter 10:19
So could you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that? So what we eat is a determinant of what we consume in the sense that if this is a high Western diet or a high carb, high fat diet, will that influence us to consume more to consume less? How exactly does that go?
Dr. Kanoski 10:35
Generally, foods that are unhealthy and are designed to be very palatable. So if you have a donut, for example, most people like donuts, this is high in both fat and sugar and sort of a prototypical element of a Western diet. And when something is more palatable, we’re able to consume more of it. And you get a blunted satiation response because of that positive reward experience of consuming something palatable.
Peter 11:03
Something that’s palatable actually blunts the satiation?
Dr. Kanoski 11:08
That is true. And if that’s been shown biologically in animal models, if they’re maintained on a Western diet, you see impaired signaling that’s called satiation, where we have these biological signals that arise from the GI tract during a meal, whose function is to terminate the meal eventually, we need to stop eating right. And what you see in animals that are maintained on a Western diet is these biological signals are blunted, they’re weaker, they’re less effective in terminating a meal, these satiation signals.
Peter 11:39
And where are these satiation signals coming from?
Dr. Kanoski 11:41
There’s different different signals: mechanical distention of the stomach is one. So just the physical expansion of the stomach by the food that we’ve consumed. There’s also intestinal hormone signals. One of the classic signals his cholecystokinin or cck, which is secreted from the intestines during eating. This signal acts in part to try to increase satiation and terminate feeding. And both of the two I just described, their effectiveness is blunted in animals that are maintained on an unhealthy yet palatable diet.
Peter 12:16
Interesting, we just came to my mind is sometimes our lab will bring leftovers from dinner or something and put them in our lab meeting room. And there’s it’s oftentimes unhealthy food. And it’s just because it’s there. I don’t really consider the unhealthy nature of it, but I just go about and start eating it regardless. And I was wondering, how does this play into the fact that we have these strict three time a day meals, but like, we also do this grazing when we just present we kind of impulsively just eat at it. How do you correspond these two thoughts together?
Dr. Kanoski 12:49
I’m interested in both, so I studied how the brain controls normal feeding behavior, meal frequency meal size, but you mentioned impulsivity and that’s something that that my lab is very much interested in. In fact, we just had a publication come out a few months ago on a neural circuit. So how the brain is causing individuals to be impulsive, and in this case it was impulsive, responding for palatable, rewarding foods as you just described.
Peter 13:18
And can you unpack the circuit a bit more is it part of the hippocampus is a different part of the brain?
Dr. Kanoski 13:21
It is part of the circuit. So the circuit that we identified, it originates with a neuropeptide. It’s called melanin concentrating hormone. And it’s produced in the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus. And this neuropeptide communicates throughout the brain but one of the strong targets of these neurons that produce the peptide is the hippocampus, the ventral region. And what we found which was interesting if you manipulate this MCH to hippocampus pathway, the animals were more impulsive for food, but it didn’t increase their free feeding behavior. It didn’t increase appetite didn’t increase their motivation to work for the food. It was very selective to that impulsive response.
Peter 14:03
And how exactly do you determine impulsive behavior in a rodent system?
Dr. Kanoski 14:08
That’s a good question. There’s a couple ways you can do that. One is a task where the animals learn to press the lever for a palatable food, donut hole, if you will, for equivalents. And they have to learn to refrain from pressing again for a 20 second period to get the next pellet. And then ideally, the animal would press every 20 seconds and get a pellet every 20 seconds. But what animals do is they can’t wait 20 seconds, they might hit it at say 15 seconds into that period, and that’s resetting the 20 second clock. So if the animal hit the lever every 15 seconds, they wouldn’t get any food at all. That’s one of the ways the other way is a more classic task is called delay discounting. And the human equivalent, you’ve probably seen videos where you have a kid, a toddler, a small child, who’s given a marshmallow and told you can eat that marshmallow now or if you wait for. Five minutes when I come back, I’ll give you two marshmallows. There’s a task that’s comparable to that in rodents, where they, they have two levers to choose from. One gives them a small but immediate reinforcement. And the other one gives them a larger reinforcement, but after different delay periods, and it’s always advantageous to take the large reinforcement lever, but what animals do is as that delay increases, they go for that short immediate reinforcement. So these are two different impulsivity tasks. One is an impulsive response. The first one the second is an impulsive choice. And we found that this mth brain system is increasing impulsivity for both of those tasks.
Peter 15:42
Forgive my naiveness, I’m not a behavioral scientist, but I was wondering what came to mind here was addiction in some sense. So it seems like if I’m wrote in presses more frequently for a pellet, could it also be addicting and what exactly is the distinction between addiction and impulsivity?
Dr. Kanoski 16:01
Yeah, I try to avoid that term. There’s a lot of controversy with regards to whether food certain foods can be addicting. I try to stay out of that controversy. But it is the case that there are common brain circuits that are involved with both food reward, and with drugs of abuse, cocaine, heroin, for example. So they are tapping into similar circuitry, but via widely different mechanisms. I’m not one that would promote the idea that food itself is addicting.
Peter 16:28
Okay. Good to know. I was also wondering, with this idea of this melanin concentrating hormone being sent from the hypothalamus to the hippocampus. Is it in the sense that these levels are upregulated or increased during impulsive behaviors? Or are they decreased? Or is there a way to change the gain on this?
Dr. Kanoski 16:49
Yeah, that’s a good question. And we had some really surprising results. So we found via different mechanisms, if we drive up the system, the animals are more impulsive. So if we wanted to drive down system, you would predict? What would you predict?
Peter 17:03
They would be less impulsive.
Dr. Kanoski 17:04
That’s what we thought too. But that’s not what we found. We drove down the system via multiple means. And every time we did that the animals were again more impulsive. So we think of it as there’s a healthy tone of the system that keeps impulsivity in check. And if you perturb that tone in either direction, you get a release on that check on impulsivity.
Peter 17:27
What pops to my mind is, is there a way to decrease impulsive behavior, but that is very complicated now that you think that there’s this physiologic setpoint. So whenever it goes up, right to try and turn it down.
Dr. Kanoski 17:37
Or it could be an impulsive, individual that that tone is too high or too low in that potentially it could be corrected with pharmacological approaches, but it’s not. We’re not there yet.
Peter 17:48
Yeah, well, I can’t wait to see what you guys do in the near future. I wanted to transition a bit more to some of your career paths. W hen someone is becoming a new PI or someone who’s making that transition from a senior postdoc to a PhD position, what advice would you give to someone who’s just starting a laboratory?
Dr. Kanoski 18:05
Good question. For me, that was seven years ago, almost to the day. I started at USC in January of 2013. And it’s a very overwhelming thing to start a lab. But you have to just take it one day at a time. And one of my initial strategies was to not put all of my eggs in one basket, but rather have two or three different very different research projects. When I started the lab, my rationale was, NIH funding is hard to predict, right? And you may have a project that at one point was something that NIH would generally fund, but the winds blow in different directions with the funding agencies. So if you put all of your effort into one project, you’re at a risk of not getting that project funded. So what I did was try to start three different, somewhat overlapping but very different projects early on, and they’ve all slowly developed into funded projects, fortunately.
Peter 19:02
And how do you know what the magic number of projects is? If you can envision yourself doing- is three, is the magic number five?
Dr. Kanoski 19:12
I have probably five right now, you know, some people work better with more than that fewer than that. I think it’s it’s unique to each individual.
Peter 19:17
Do you think it’s also dependent on the starting size of your lab? Do you have the physical human power to go about that?
Dr. Kanoski 19:23
Yeah. And that’s going to be reflective of your your startup package, how much funding you’re given how much space you’re given when you start the lab. Another thing that I get asked about a lot is how do you hire people? Do you hire someone for a certain skill? Or do you hire someone based on a personality? It’s really difficult to describe, and we all make mistakes in that arena. But I generally try to hire people that aren’t necessarily bringing in a skill but that I find are really engaged in the research that we’re doing. I call it the fire in the belly. So if rotation student doing technically everything right in the lab, but I don’t see that enthusiasm for the research or not bringing papers to my office and excited about it, then I don’t think that’s generally a good fit for me.
Peter 20:13
And do you think your hiring practices have changed? I guess what I’m thinking is the first person that you hire often is a very big decision point for you. And do you think your thoughts on what is valuable for personnel in your laboratory has changed from this first hire to now?
Dr. Kanoski 20:27
I do, because at that point, I was just it was just me, right. And I needed to order stuff and set things up. And now I have a much larger lab. So it does change as the lab changes.
Peter 20:41
One thing that you touched upon earlier was NIH funding is really hard to predict. And you have been incredibly successful. You’ve had three aro ones recently funded and congratulations on that. I was wondering, do you have any advice [for] younger investigators trying to get this grant funding is there a particular avenue that they should approach or there’s what goes through your head when you’re trying to give someone advice for-
Dr. Kanoski 21:05
Tricks of the trade for grant writing? Certainly. Yeah. One thing that is always helped me is to focus a lot on the specific aims page. Because if you lose the reviewers there, that’s it, you’re done. So I consider that page, it has to be a masterpiece. It has to tell a story be somewhat redundant, but not too redundant. has to really connect with the reader. So I spend probably a solid month on that one page before I write the rest of the grant. And I don’t move on until that’s at least from my perspective, as close to perfect as I can get it.
Peter 21:39
Yeah. So really hone in on that specific games.
Dr. Kanoski 21:40
I think it’s critically important. Yeah. And another thing for, particularly for younger investigators trying to get fellowships, and I think we all know this, but it’s worth pointing out to get a funded template that’s close to your area of research. And you get this by reaching out to colleagues and sometimes you have that within the lab that you’re in, but it’s useful to have some kind [of] recently funded template, this is a grant for that same mechanism you’re trying to get that was successfully funded.
Peter 22:10
But then at the same time you have to differentiate-
Dr. Kanoski 22:21
Of course. It’s not that you’re using that research, but it just it’s to get you the feel of what a successful grant for that funding mechanism looks like.
Peter 22:17
That’s really great advice.
Dr. Kanoski 22:18
And you’ll find that people are generally collegial, and will share that with you.
Peter 22:23
Yeah, with this whole talk of grants, where we’re thinking where the research is going, where do you see your lab going? Or where do you envision the five projects that you’re working on? Do you see any way to consolidate them? Or do you see them as five separate projects moving into the future? I know, we’ve probably touched upon two or three of them.
Dr. Kanoski 22:40
They’re all connected in some way most of our projects focus on on some elements of hippocampus, not all of them. But to be honest, I don’t look too far ahead. I try to focus on the data. That’s what drives me. I try not to look too far beyond the data. I mean, you have to to some extent to write a grant, you have to imagine some experiments that you might do. But the nice thing about the NIH model is that it’s not a contract. You don’t have to do those experiments, you have to do something that’s somewhat related. But it allows you to follow your data, make discoveries, find unexpected results, and then go in a different direction based on those results.
Peter 22:21
Really neat. One of the other things that I think about is oftentimes we look at research and we feel it’s very removed from our day to day practice. A lot of the work that you’re doing is something that is fundamental to our day to day practice. Eating is something that we do every day and understanding what motivates our decision to go after food or when to eat is something that I think about on a daily basis. And I was wondering how your research has impacted your day to day life or are your thoughts on eating?
Dr. Kanoski 23:46
Well, I’m a vegan, and it’s probably related to what I study, but I do tend to think carefully about what I eat probably more so than people that aren’t energy balance researchers per se and it’s not unique to me, you know, a lot of my colleagues are foodies. And are chefs.
Peter 24:08
Do you mind me asking what went behind the decision for you to become a vegan? Or have you always been a vegan?
Dr. Kanoski 24:13
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 20 years and just thought I would try a strict vegan diet a couple years ago. And it’s not for everyone, but it worked pretty well for me, so stuck with it so far.
Peter 24:24
And have you looked at the effects of a vegan diet on the hippocampus? Or is there any research that you could call to?
Dr. Kanoski 24:32
Well, the problem with that is rodent diets aren’t vegan. So the baseline isn’t [there]. But it’s not something I’m interested in studying directly.
Peter 24:40
And then the other thing you mentioned was you associate with people who are foodies, not intentionally, but just by nature of the trade. And I was wondering, does your lab do food outings or do you go as a lab to go try out different types of food is food a big part of your lifestyle as well?
Dr. Kanoski 24:57
Not necessarily. I mean, personally, it is. But as a lab we do outings together, we have activities, but they’re generally not focused on food. For example, we went ziplining on Catalina Island. Recently, we’ve done a few escape rooms. We’re going to go drive ATV vehicles at Lake Arrowhead. So we do that kind of thing. But we do have a Christmas lunch at the same Thai restaurant every year. Yeah, that’s our only food activity.
Peter 25:26
Sometimes the public perception of scientists is that of people who are in white coats doing research all the time, in my kind of experience has been very different, right? We have all these lab outings, we have these activities that allow us to bond and I was wondering what do you think the value of these lab outings is for team cohesiveness or even your science in general?
Dr. Kanoski 25:49
I think the lab is version of a family. So I don’t think it’s healthy if the only way that people are interacting is in the trenches of the lab. And I try to keep things light in my lab and and not just to always talk about the data.
Peter 26:21
You mentioned earlier that someone has to have kind of a fire in the belly for you to want them to really be a part of your laboratory. What else are you looking for in graduate students? And what do you hope to instill in these graduate students as you are a mentor to them across their training?
Dr. Kanoski 26:39
I want them to enjoy the science. I think it’s important, for example, to one to plug your own data, right? I don’t want to have to tell someone, you’re falling behind. I need to see this. If someone’s really enthusiastic about the research. I don’t have to nag them about anything.
Peter 26:56
So kind of this inner drive or this inner motivation, and how do you go about instilling that in your trainees? Or is it something that someone just naturally has?
Dr. Kanoski 27:05
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if there’s an exact recipe for how you instill that enthusiasm. I think some of its inherent, but some of it comes through seeing your project succeed, or finding an unexpected but exciting result that led you in a different direction.
Peter 27:20
Have you had any of those experiences yourself that have led you to pursue a field that’s different than what you thought you were going to go into?
Dr. Kanoski 27:27
Yeah, I guess you could say that I joined Terry Davidson’s lab at Purdue, not because I was interested in feeding behavior, but rather I was interested in the hippocampus and what types of memory processes that brain region is regulating. But at that time, there were a lot of feeding related researchers at Purdue, including some that studied the gut brain axis, the vagus nerve and their thought was really influencing my thought at the time and we started to think about how the hippocampus and memory processes influence feeding behavior because at the end of the day, that’s a very important behavior for for organisms. How do you acquire food? What are you consuming? Yeah, certainly. So I got into feeding by by accident, it wasn’t my intention.
Peter 28:11
That’s nice. Just follow the research, follow the data, what you’d mentioned earlier. And you’ve talked about the vagus a bit. This is one of the projects we hadn’t talked about earlier. Could you tell us a little bit more about this vagus project that you’re talking about potentially linking the hippocampus into vagus in the gut?
Dr. Kanoski 28:26
Yeah, so the vagus nerve is 10th cranial nerve, and it’s a conduit of neural communication between the gut and the brain. So this nerve has cell bodies located outside of the brain, the nodose ganglion, and the sensory fibers of this nerve innervate, the gastrointestinal tract, other organs as well, but we’re focused in my lab on the GI tract. And one of the signals that’s carried by this nerve is something I referred to earlier, the satiation process, which leads to the termination of feeding. And that’s really the classic way that
this nerve has been studied in the context of feeding is the communication of these satiation signals. But there’s also a connection between gut derived signals the vagus nerve and the hippocampus. And we knew that before we got into this project based on some functional neuroimaging results, where if you expand the stomach, for example, you see a high level of neural activity in hippocampus. In humans, there was a study that stimulated the gastric branch of the vagus nerve. And somewhat surprising to the investigators at that time this was in 2006, was that the activity the blood flow activity, using fMRI was the highest in the hippocampus of anywhere else in the brain. So there’s this mysterious connection, but the function of that connection had not been studied in depth. And this is a project where we found that if you selectively eliminate the guts sensory nerve that innervates the upper gut, so the stomach and the intestines, you see severe impairments in memory processes that rely on the hippocampus. And we’re really interested if there’s a functional connection there. And what we then did is to try to map the pathway through which these gut signals are eventually getting to the hippocampus. And when I say map the pathway, we’re looking at what endocrine signals might be involved, what neurotransmitters might be involved, and what are the connections in the brain through which this information is getting there.
Peter 30:25
That’s really neat. Do we know like what the exact pathway is? And does it go through the hypothalamus and other regions that you had talked about earlier and whether or not this is associated with impulsive eating? Is the Vegas associated with impulsive eating as well?
Dr. Kanoski 30:38
I don’t know any links between the vagus and impulsivity off the top of my head, but we do know a bit about the pathway. But it doesn’t seem to go through the hypothalamus. In this case, there’s a connection we identified through the medial septum, which is interesting because this region connects to the hippocampus and this is one of the regions that’s most affected by Alzheimer’s disease, this colon urge acceptable input to hippocampus. And in fact, Alzheimer’s medications largely target cholinergic septal input and so we’ve identified a pathway from the gut through the medial septum to the hippocampus that we’re now studying.
Peter 31:18
That’ll be really interesting [to see] whether or not an ingestible can be derived or some pharmaceutical that targets that gut specifically to maybe perhaps lower risk of Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Kanoski 31:29
Yeah, we’re actually studying that now. Very early in the project, but we’re interested in if you amplify the gut vagus signal in models of Alzheimer’s in rodents, can we attenuate some of the cognitive deficits? That’s something we’re slowly starting to get into now.
Peter 31:46
Yeah, that’s really exciting. I can’t wait to see what you guys find out from that. Well, great. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Kanoski 31:51
Thanks.
Peter 32:03
Dr. Kanoski taught us how the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is traditionally thought to govern learning and memory, can control feeding behavior and energy regulation, reminding us that seemingly separate areas of our body are perhaps more closely linked than we think and may work together to regulate our behavior. Similarly, when starting up a laboratory, it is key to pursue parallel avenues of research that may seem unrelated initially but may tie together in time. With that, I want to thank you all so much for listening and we’ll see you on the next episode.
For more of our content, you can follow us on twitter @gutbrains or visit our website @thinkgastronauts.com.The Gastronauts podcast would be impossible without our incredible team. Meredith Schmehl is our producer and theme music composer. And special thanks to the founders of Gastraonuts: Dr. Diego Bohórquez and the Bohorquez laboratory.