Linnea Freeman
Furman University, SC·Neuroscience
People often eat rich, tasty food even when they are not hungry. This is called hedonic feeding, eating driven by pleasure rather than need.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Psychology
- Topics
hedonic feeding
gut microbiome
sex differences
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether disrupting the gut microbiome in adulthood increases hedonic feeding more in female than male rats, using a behavioral economics task with a high-fat, palatable reward.
- Determine whether disrupting the gut microbiome in early life changes sex differences in hedonic feeding in adult rats.
- Test whether gut microbiota transplanted from male rats lowers hedonic feeding in females and microbiota from female rats raises it in males.
- Determine whether pregnancy, or a previous pregnancy, increases hedonic feeding and palatable food seeking in female rats, alongside fecal microbiome and short-chain fatty acid profiling.
More about the research
It is one contributor to obesity, which affects more women than men worldwide. Women also show differences in hedonic feeding that may help explain that gap. Much is known about how hedonic feeding overlaps with drug addiction, but far less about how the gut and its resident microbes shape it. This project asks whether the gut microbiome, the community of bacteria living in the intestine, helps explain sex differences in eating for pleasure. It tests the idea that females eat more high-fat, palatable food because of a network tied to reproductive success that includes the gut microbiome.
Why it matters
Obesity affects at least 100 million more women than men worldwide. Learning how gut microbes shape sex differences in eating for pleasure could help guide personalized obesity interventions. It could especially inform microbiome-based approaches, such as treatments that change gut bacteria to reduce overeating of high-fat foods.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rebecca Hofford
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test how depleting the gut microbiome in adolescent versus adult mice changes fentanyl self-administration, a measure of how strongly the drug reinforces drug-taking.
Yanjiao Zhou
University of Connecticut, CT·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether senescent cells reshape the gut microbiome and its metabolites by transplanting or genetically clearing senescent cells in older male and female mice, using the p21-Cre mouse model.
Hao Wang
University of Michigan, MI·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Track changes in the gut microbiome and microbial metabolites in mice as cadmium-induced learning and memory deficits begin.
The school
Furman University: 3 labs on PI Pages.
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