Food preference and feeding behavior in early development

The broad goal of this proposed study is to develop a novel research framework to understand mechanistically how exposures to food cues in early development can affect food preferences through alterations in neural structure and function. The innovation here is that I will study the development of feeding behaviors and the nervous system using the larval zebrafish, a small, transparent vertebrate which offers a vast toolkit of cutting edge neurophysiological and genetic research techniques that may be employed non-invasively to study the developing animal in real time. Importantly, zebrafish gestation occurs outside of the womb but within a transparent, permeable membrane (i.e. chorion/egg), affording us the unique opportunity to test the effects of embryonic exposure to environmental cues, such as food odors, under highly controlled conditions, and to concurrently monitor brain development and function.