cbc scholars bios
Jackson J. Cone
CBC Scholar: Class of 2012
PhD Candidate, Program in Neurosciences, UIC
Advisor: Mitchell Roitman
Email:
ROITMAN WEBPAGE
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Obesity is rampant due in large part to the availability of densely caloric, highly palatable foods which engage areas of the brain classically thought of as reward circuitry. Activation of this circuitry, and in particular increases in dopamine within the nucleus accumbens, is thought to promote food-seeking even in the absence of caloric need. My work investigates the link between peripheral signals that have been traditionally viewed as homeostatic regulators of food intake and their interactions with dopamine neurons during food-seeking behaviors. To accomplish this, I measure fluctuations of dopamine within the nucleus accumbens with sub-second temporal resolution. In so doing, I can relate increases in dopamine to specific behavioral events and quantify how they are modulated by peptide hormones that signal energy status. Sucrose pellets are delivered to rats with variable inter-pellet intervals. Each pellet evokes a brief dopamine spike, lasting just seconds, in the nucleus accumbens. If a cue predicts the delivery of the sucrose pellet, dopamine release shifts to the onset of the cue. My initial study demonstrated that the peripheral hormone ghrelin, which regulates feeding behavior, dynamically influences the response of dopamine to food rewards as well as environmental cues that trigger food-seeking behaviors. Our data demonstrate that in addition to affecting homeostatic circuitry, peripheral feeding hormones also regulate feeding behavior by selectively modulating the magnitude of dopamine signaling to food and food-related stimuli. I am following up the initial work by investigating the specific brain sites where administration of feeding hormones can influence dopamine signaling in both awake-behaving animals as well as acute brain slice preparations. This program of research will shed considerable light on human disorders of motivation such as obesity and could potentially inform future therapeutics aimed at treating the disease.
PUBLICATIONS:
Brown HD, McCutcheon JE, Cone JJ, Ragozzino ME, Roitman MF. Primary food reward and reward-predictive stimuli evoke different patterns of phasic dopamine signaling throughout the striatum. Eur J Neurosci. 2011 Dec;34(12):1997-2006. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2011.07914.x. (PubMed)
Roitman MF, Wescott S, Cone JJ, McLane MP, Wolfe HR. MSI-1436 reduces acute food intake without affecting dopamine transporter activity. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2010 Nov;97(1):138-43. (PubMed)
Tye KM, Tye LD, Cone JJ, Hekkelman EF, Janak PH, Bonci A. Methylphenidate facilitates learning-induced amygdala plasticity. Nat Neurosci. 2010 Apr;13(4):475-81. (PubMed)
Cone JJ, Roitman MF. Homeostatic circuitry pushes back. Cell Science Reviews. 2010 6(3): 25-26.
Tye KM*, Cone JJ*, Schairer WW, Janak PH. Amygdala neural encoding of the absence of reward during extinction. J Neurosci. 2010 Jan 6;30(1):116-25. (*Co-first author.) (PubMed)
Chaudhri N, Sahuque LL, Cone JJ, Janak PH. Reinstated ethanol-seeking in rats is modulated by environmental context and requires the nucleus accumbens core. Eur J Neurosci. 2008 Dec;28(11):2288-98. (PubMed)
AWARDS:
- CBC Scholar 2012
- UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Science Predoctoral Fellowship (TL1 RR029877)
- NIH Predoctoral Fellowship (NIH T32 MH067631-06A1)
- UIC Chancellor’s Supplemental Research Fellowship
MENTORING EXPERIENCE:
Ashraf Abbas, B.S. Supervised his Undergraduate Honors Thesis in Neuroscience (2010-2011): “Acute effects of the HDAC inhibitor valproic acid on phasic dopamine signaling.”
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Co-Instructor: History 98 (Spring 2006). University of California, Berkeley DE-Cal Program.
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