Postdoctoral position

Obesity is a major public health challenge with profound metabolic and psychiatric comorbidities, yet the neural mechanisms linking diet-induced metabolic disruption to circadian and mood alterations remain poorly understood. The hypothalamic arcuate nucleus (ARC) is a central integrative hub that receives metabolic, circadian and visceral inputs and projects to brain circuits involved in feeding, reward and affective regulation. However, how ARC neuronal activity is dynamically reorganized during the early stages of diet-induced obesity (DIO), and how this process differs between sexes, is still unknown.

The hosting laboratory offers a research project aimed at deciphering how hypercaloric diets recruit specific ARC neuronal populations and how this recruitment propagates through brain-wide circuits to drive sex-specific trajectories of DIO and its comorbidities. The project will combine longitudinal metabolic and behavioral phenotyping with whole-brain activity mapping, circuit tracing and in vivo functional recordings in mouse models. A particular focus will be placed on the role of visceral afferents from the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) in triggering early ARC dysfunction and circadian feeding misalignment.

The recruited postdoctoral fellow will develop expertise in systems and circuit neuroscience, including viral-based neuronal tagging, whole-brain mapping, chemogenetic manipulations and fiber photometry, while gaining strong training in the study of body–brain interactions and sex differences in disease progression. The project offers an interdisciplinary environment at the interface of neuroscience, metabolism and chronobiology, supported by state-of-the-art infrastructures and international collaborations.

This hosting offer is well suited for motivated postdoctoral candidates interested in neural circuit dynamics, metabolic disorders and the mechanisms linking environmental challenges to brain plasticity, fully aligned with the objectives of the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships in terms of excellence, training and career development.