Kristen O’Connell’s research program is focused on understanding the impact of diet, body weight and peripheral hormone signaling on neuronal excitability and plasticity in the hypothalamus and other brain regions associated with the regulation of food intake and body weight.

At its root, obesity is caused by eating too much, but it is now apparent that obesity is associated with dysfunction in appetite circuits in the brain. Thus, any successful and lasting treatment must address these appetitive circuits to ultimately modify food intake and energy expenditure. To this end, the overarching goal of my NIH-funded research program is to understand the neural control of appetite and how diet and body weight affect the excitability of the neurons in key CNS circuits responsible for food intake. There are two major on-going projects in my lab that aim to tackle this question from different angles, one focused on AgRP neuronal excitability and the second on the role of astrocytes in energy balance and obesity.