Mary Elizabeth Baugh, a researcher at Virginia Tech’s VTC Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, received a National Institutes of Health-mentored Investigator Development Award to study how metabolic health affects the brain systems that shape what and how we eat.
The four-year award will support Bo’s research into how obesity and insulin resistance affect reward learning and decision-making in the human brain.
“This will help launch my independent career as a researcher focused on the interaction between metabolic and brain processes that influence eating behavior. This project will focus on the unconscious biological processes that underlie people’s relationship with food,” said Bo, who will conduct research in Alex DiFeliciantonio’s lab. This lab investigates why we eat what we eat and how it affects our bodies and brains.
Beau earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nutrition and exercise physiology. She then worked as a registered dietitian at Wake Forest Baptist Weight Management Center for two years before returning to Virginia Tech to earn a doctorate in physiology and metabolism.
Obesity and its metabolic complications, including type 2 diabetes, are major public health challenges in the United States. Previous research has shown that obesity is associated with changes in brain structure and activity, but scientists want to better understand how these changes are reflected in everyday behaviors such as learning from food rewards and choosing what to eat.
Pearl H. Chiu, a professor at the institute and co-sponsor of Bo’s project, focuses on computational psychiatry. She brings successful expertise in modeling complex behavior, computational modeling of human brain function during decision making, and mentoring early career scientists.
Dr. Bo’s research will investigate how excess body fat and insulin sensitivity influence two important aspects of behavior: how people learn from food rewards after ingestion, and how they make decisions about food and other rewards.
I have always been impressed by Mary Elizabeth and her drive to understand the psychological and neurological basis of decision-making, something I saw patients struggle with during my time as a registered dietitian. The project combines her experience as a nutritionist with what she learned in the lab about brain function and decision-making. ”
Alex DiFeliciantonio, assistant professor and interim co-director of the Institute’s Health Behavior Research Center
Dr. Bo’s research combines behavioral experiments with neuroimaging and computational modeling to better understand how metabolic signals from the body influence brain circuits involved in everyday learning and eating behaviors.
The goal is to understand how metabolic and neural signals interact to influence eating behavior and energy balance, with the aim of developing more personalized approaches to treating obesity and metabolic diseases.
Dr. Bo will use the award to focus on expanding his expertise in cognitive and appetitive neuroscience, computational modeling of decision making, and functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques used to study brain activity during reward-based tasks.
The project will run through November 2029 and will support Baugh’s research program at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute in Roanoke.
