MCCHE Precision Convergence Webinar Series with Ivan de Araujo
Sensation, Reward, and Gut-Brain Pathways
By Ivan de Araujo
Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
With High-Level Panel of Leaders in Science, Technology, On-the-Ground Action, and Policy
Gastrointestinal organs convey mixed messages to the central nervous system, which range from mechanical stretch to nutritional value. The presentation aims at addressing the question of how these multimodal signals arising from the gut may be decoded by brain neurons. In particular it describes a unique aspect of the functional neuroanatomy of food reinforcement, namely, the ability of gut nutrient sensors to directly activate the brain's subcortical reward circuitry. Activation of subcortical circuitries results in the bypassing of the cortical networks that mediate overt, conscious insights into the sensory-hedonic qualities of foods. The implications for our understanding of phenomena such as satiety and pleasure, and the conscious perception of body states, will be discussed.
About the speaker
Ivan de Araujo Studied Philosophy and Mathematics at the University of Brasilia, followed by postgraduate studies in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics. He was awarded the title of Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Edmund T. Rolls. After his doctorate, De Araujo held a postdoctoral research position with Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University. He then acted between 2007 and 2018 as Professor of Psychiatry at the Pierce Laboratories at Yale University. Since 2018 he has been a Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
About the series
The Precision Convergence series is launched to catalyze unique synergy between, on the one hand, novel partnerships across sciences, sectors and jurisdictions around targeted domains of real-world solutions, and on the other hand, a next generation convergence of AI with advanced research computing and other data and digital architectures such as PSC’s Bridges-2, and supporting data sharing frameworks such as HuBMAP, informing in a real time as possible the design, deployment and monitoring of solutions for adaptive real-world behaviour and context.
The Precision Convergence Webinar Series is co-hosted by The McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE) at McGill University and The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, a joint computational research centre between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
