Lindsey Schier

Nearly two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese. These conditions are oftentimes linked to the chronic overconsumption of highly palatable diets that despite being calorically rich, are nutritionally maladaptive. The integration of oral (i.e., taste) and postoral signals elicited by these foods and fluids as they are ingested, digested, and assimilated into the body is critical for the control of meal size and diet selection. In the Schier laboratory, we investigate how the chemical constituents of foods and fluids are sensed, how these oral and postoral signals are processed in the brain and channeled into the behavioral outputs govern appetite.