2023年11月2日

的抽屉 Stephen Robertson’s office are stuffed with goodies most would find appealing: cookies, 薯片, peanut butter — and a surprising amount of powdered chocolate drink mix. 大学的助理教授 心理学 and one of his students have been using the snacks to study the neurological consequences of chronic consumption of a high-fat, 高糖饮食.

“This involves using rats in two groups: one consuming a regular diet of rat chow, 另一组食用高脂肪, 我们在实验室里做的高糖饮食,24岁的凯特·泰勒解释道, a 神经科学 主修 荣誉项目.

使用搅拌器, Teles创造了她称之为“gloop”的东西,一种饼干的混合物, 薯片和饮料混合, that was fed to some of the rats in Susquehanna’s lab. The other group continued receiving a protein-heavy rat food.

饮食暴露后, Teles and Robertson trained both groups of rats to respond to a sugar pellet reward that was paired with a light and auditory stimulus. 一旦他们对这种视觉配对做出反应, 听觉和食物奖励, “灭绝”是在不同的时间点实施的.

凯特·泰尔斯24岁 makes “gloop” in the 心理学 lab.“This meant temporarily taking away the food reward associated but continuing to present the visual and light stimuli,罗伯逊解释道. “We observed how the rats’ responses differed based on their diet exposure.”

Preliminary findings show that rats that consumed the high-fat, 高糖饮食 were less sensitive to “extinction” conditions. 这意味着老鼠暴露在高脂肪, 高糖饮食的反应更持久, which is likely being driven by the food-associated light and auditory stimuli. 一种可能的解释是高脂肪, 高糖饮食 is altering the rewarding properties of the food cues relative to rats fed a control diet.

换句话说, 看来高脂肪, 高糖饮食 blunts the brain’s ability to process rewards,罗伯逊说.

和人类做个类比, 如果有人一直食用高脂肪, 高糖饮食, food-associated stimuli could be encouraging that person to continue that behavior — despite their best attempt to maintain a clean diet.

There is already existing literature that suggests high-fat, 高糖饮食s lead to a change in the reward processing of the brain, 罗伯森说. His greatest interest in his current 研究 is to try to duplicate earlier results through the use of operant chambers. 广泛应用于行为心理学研究, an operant chamber is a controlled environment that allows 研究ers to study behavioral conditioning and modification, 通常在动物身上.

“Although we are 研究ing this particular behavioral phenomenon in animals, we can infer some parallels between the behavior we’re seeing in the lab and how the human brain responds to the same type of diet,罗伯逊说. The next step is to use dopaminergic drugs that target the reward centers of the brain as tools to investigate diet-induced changes in neurobiology.

“We are trying to determine if we stimulate dopamine systems will the rat respond more or less to the food-paired stimuli depending on diet exposure,罗伯逊说.

对Teles来说，这是一次信息丰富的经历, 谁来自学院维尔, 宾西法尼亚, 并且正在考虑在 研究 毕业后.

“I have learned the basics of rat husbandry and care, and I have gained skills in conducting procedures, collecting data and organizing that data in a way that makes it easy to analyze once trials are completed,泰勒斯说。. “Working in the lab has helped me gain vital skills, as I now have experience with animal procedures following ethical and safety guidelines. 在实验室工作之外, 我学会了团队合作, time management and problem-solving skills that are applicable to any potential future career.”

When reflecting on challenges she overcame in the lab, she recalled how the first few batches of the high fat, 她创造的高糖饮食并没有奏效. They were too thick, causing the food processor to overheat.

“通过一些尝试和错误, I figured out that presoaking some of the ingredients in water allows them to soften up and blend with ease,泰勒斯说。. “It may seem trivial, but it made this important part of the process in the lab so much easier.”

了解更多有关 心理学系.