Project
Academic Center for Research On Nutritional health In Man (ACRONIM)
This application aims to establish a state-of-the-art facility for multidisciplinary and integrative academic research on the complex interaction between gastrointestinal, metabolic, endocrine, neural, behavioral and psychological mechanisms underlying the regulation of hunger, feeding behavior and body weight in health and various diseases including gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, liver disease, obesity and eating disorders. To conduct such research, the facility needs dedicated and versatile rooms to perform diverse human nutrient- and diet-related studies and interventions, space and devices to measure metabolism, energy expenditure, and body composition, and a working space for controlling stimulus presentation, logging of responses and pre-processing biological samples. Research topics include studies on homeostatic and hedonic mechanisms of meal termination (volume tolerance) and initiation (return of hunger), the role of nutrients in gastrointestinal and psychological symptom generation and altered nutrient processing in metabolic disorders and obesity.