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Dr. Johnny Figueroa | Neurobiological Mechanisms Linking Stress and Obesity
Measuring behavior at Loma Linda University
The yearly Society for Neuroscience (SfN) conference is by extent the place to meet your fellow reseachers and talk about the latest developments in the field. Last November it took place in San Diego, USA, where we talked with Dr. Johnny Figueroa, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. He specializes in nutritional neuroscience, but foremost how (adverse) childhood events can have long term neurobiological consequences.
At the conference, he presented the evaluation of a model that explains why certain individuals that are exposed to early adversities can develop obesity and obesity-like phenotypes. The new data his research team obtained in their lab was produced using recently acquired Noldus Phenotyper cages.
Dr. Johnny Figueroa: "The PhenoTyper cages allow us to measure long term and longitudinal behavior"
Dr. Figueroa states that you could miss up to 99% of all the behaviors that the animal is performing during a regular day if you are only measuring behavior for 5-10 minutes in a novel cage. The PhenoTyper is however designed to also be a home cage, where we can observe the animals for longer periods of time, and see how they behave under "normal" circumstances.
"I've been working with Noldus for quite a while now, and I absolutely love the interactions with them. I feel like it's a parternship from day one".
“Being able to capture all the behaviors that an animal perfomes during a regular day with Noldus apparatus and also EthoVision XT has been really beneficial for our science."
Johnny Figueroa | Loma Linda University, California, USA