Enrica Montalban

NutriNeuro, Bordeaux, France

Title

Striatal Astrocytes Mediate Behavioral and Metabolic Adaptation in response to inflammation

Abstract

Beyond their role in reward processing, striatal circuits emerge as key nodes in the regulation of various dimensions of eating behavior. Here I will present recent findings directly supporting this view. On the one hand, manipulation of the activity of striatal astrocytes directly affects both peripheral metabolism and cognitive flexibility in the context of obesogenic diet exposure. On the other hand, manipulation of Ankk1 expression selectively in dopamine D2 receptor-expressing neurons of the mouse striatum, recapitulate both metabolic and reward processing phenotypes of humans carrying the Taq1A polymorphism in the Ankk1 gene. Together, these findings highlight the striatum as a main structure for body–brain interactions, at the interface of metabolism and reward.

Biosketch

Enrica Montalban is currently a Research Associate in neuroscience, and her current research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of depressive symptoms associated with inflammation. Specifically, she focuses on the comorbidity between obesity and depression and investigate how obesity-induced inflammation alters the activity of the reward system, leading to disturbances in motivational tone. In this context, her past and current research has investigated the functionality of the reward system and in particular the mechanisms underlying the regulation and dysregulation of food intake in both physiological and pathological contexts. In her early work she developed transcriptomic approaches to characterize the genetic identities of striatal neuron subpopulations in relation to reward system dysregulations. The work of her first post-doc focused on understanding the relationship between energy metabolism and reward processing in the context of obesity and genetic susceptibility to psychiatric conditions, dissecting neuronal and astrocytic implications in this interplay. Recently, she has shifted towards translational approaches and developed a project focused on exploring the role of inflammation in the development of depression, in obese subjects and preclinical models of obesity.