Mieneke C. M. Luijendijk

This study identifies a prefrontal cortex-lateral hypothalamus circuit that mediates stress-driven increased food intake in mice.

The paper identifies distinct VTA neuronal ensembles for reward and stress and shows their necessity for adaptive behaviors.

The paper uses scRNA-seq to analyze LepR cells in the hypothalamus, identifying eight neuronal clusters and 17 non-neuronal populations, and finds enrichment of obesity GWAS signals in multiple clusters.

This study investigates how hyperdopaminergic states affect decision-making in rats by examining the role of VTA projections to the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex.