WINTER CONFERENCE ON BRAIN RESEARCH
Brain Talk Town Meeting
The purpose of the Brain Talk Town Meeting is to open a dialogue between scientists and non-scientists. The meeting will start with a scientific presentation aimed at non-scientists, which will be followed by an open discussion period involving questions from the audience.
The 2025 Brain Talk Town Meeting
The 2025 Brain Talk Town Meeting will be on Sunday, January 26th, 2025 from 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM. Suzanne Dickson, Ph.D., will be presenting her talk titled Brainy insights about eating and obesity.
Eating has got so complicated in our modern world, with food available 24/7 and in copious amounts. Why is it so easy to gain weight and so difficult to lose it? What is the role of genetics versus environment? Eating is controlled by the brain and by a host of hormones that inform the brain about our energy reserves as well as feelings of hunger and satiety. In this lecture, Professor Dickson will walk us through the role of these hormones in regulating brain pathways involved in keeping us fed and in processing the hedonic drive to over-eat. She will also explain how obesity can be conquered by new blockbuster obesity drugs as well as by weight loss surgery. There will also be an opportunity to raise all those questions you ever wondered about eating and obesity.
Suzanne L Dickson is a neurobiologist and Professor of Neuroendocrinology at the University of Gothenburg. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Neuroendocrinology from the University of Cambridge in 1993, where she later became Senior Lecturer in Physiology. She is a leading figure in neuroendocrinology and works within many European Union and international organisations and societies to promote animal research, facilitate grant funding and training of Early Career Scientists. Her research into the neurobiology of appetite aims to unravel neurobiological pathways that respond to orexigenic signals, such as the hormone, ghrelin, and that drive feeding behaviours, not only food intake but also food choice, food anticipation, food reward and food motivation. This work involves mostly preclinical studies and includes behavioural tasks, viral vector mapping, chemogenetics and RNAscope. She is President of the European Brain Council and Secretary of the European College for Neuropsychopharmacology.