Many thanks to the organizers and speakers — especially Thomas Gudermann — for making this such a memorable meeting.
More about the CRC:
www.sfb-trr152.med.uni-muenchen.de/index.html
#TRPchannels #Olfaction #Homeostasis #SFBTRR152 #Neuroscience
3/3 This symposium has been a wonderful get-together of CRC members and affiliated international colleagues, full of exciting science, stimulating exchange, and a great collaborative spirit. ✨
2/3 It was inspiring to hear about his group's seminal body of work in this setting — a particularly fitting moment at the end of SFB/TRR 152 “TRiPs to Homeostasis: Maintenance of Body Homeostasis by TRP Channel Modules,” which, after 12 years of funding, is now coming to a close.
1/3 A real highlight of the International Symposium on Regulation of Cell Functions by Transient Receptor Potential Channels was a beautiful talk by Frank Zufall, who presented his life’s work on olfaction and its signalling mechanisms. 👃🧠
The latest version of our collaboration with Katalin Torok and her lab is up. We report some new glutamate sensors. Great work from Sara Bertelli in Berlin and the whole team in London (Holly & Oanh particularly).
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/6
The Easter Bunny, Porto-style 🇵🇹
⚖️ Still early days—but this raises an interesting idea:
Could we tap into these circuits to boost heat resilience? (5/5)
📄 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
💡 Fun connection: these look a lot like the circuits engaged during heat acclimation.
So the brain might be using the same playbook for different ways of cooling. (4/5)
🔍 In our new preprint, we follow this pathway one step further:
Capsaicin flips on cooling circuits in the hypothalamus 🧠
The result is a coordinated response:
→ more heat loss (tail vasodilation)
→ less heat production (brown fat turns down) (3/5)
We’ve known since the 1950s that capsaicin triggers body cooling.
More recent work showed it starts with sensory neurons and spinal pathways.
But what does the brain do with this signal? (2/5)
🌶️ Why does spicy food make you feel hot—but actually cool you down? 👇 (thread)
3/3 - So resilience may increasingly depend on thermomobility and thermal agency: choices and actions that shape exposure—from micro-decisions (shade, timing) to collective responses to climate risk.
2/3 - With sustained heat, organisms can shift into heat acclimation—a reversible, rheostatic reset across autonomic and behavioural control. But there are real physiological limits when heat becomes severe or prolonged
1/3 - Heat challenges nervous systems: neurons are temperature-sensitive and the brain must coordinate whole-body thermoregulation. Autonomic buffering helps—but behaviour often runs in parallel (shade, posture, activity).
🧠🌡️ New Comment in Nature Reviews Neuroscience: Neural adaptation to climate change: mechanisms, limits and opportunities (with Patrick Haggard, UCL).
🔗 [ rdcu.be/e8BEJ ]
5/5 PIs: Jan Siemens (Pharmacology, Heidelberg) & Peer Fischer (IMSEAM, Heidelberg).
For more information: see flyer above
➡️ Details & application platform: www.health-life-sciences.de/opportunitie...
4/5 Fit: neuroscience + physics/translation interest, or engineering (optics/acoustics) + strong interest in animal-model neuroscience.
3/5 Mouse models include diet-induced obesity and myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury (metabolic + cardiovascular phenotyping).
2/5 Two approaches we’ll compare:
• IR fiber-optic heating
• low-intensity focused ultrasound (fUS)
1/5 We’re exploring a new strategy: instead of external cooling/warming, modulate the brain’s own thermostat circuits (hypothalamic preoptic area) to shift whole-body physiology from within.
📣 Postdoc position in Heidelberg (Neurobiology × Engineering): neuromodulation of thermoregulatory brain circuits to improve health.
Deadline: March 31, 2026.
6/6
Take-home: a circuit logic linking ambient heat to both cooling physiology and appetite — adding a “temperature layer” to energy-balance models. 🧩
#neuroscience #thermoregulation #hypothalamus #metabolism
5/6
Feeding is also under circuit control: VMPO LepR→PVH suppresses food intake. 🍽️⬇️
4/6
Inhibiting either pathway causes hyperthermia — strongest under heat stress (36°C). 🌡️
3/6
Both pathways shape heat-defense physiology (incl. BAT-related outputs), with distinct roles. ♨️
2/6
These neurons project to multiple brain regions, including two intra-hypothalamic pathways: VMPO LepR→PVH and VMPO LepR→DMH. 🔀
1/6
We identify neuronal pathways that originate from warm-responsive VMPO LepR neurons in the preoptic area — a core thermoregulation hub. 🧠
📄 Happy to share our new Current Biology paper: we identify two intra-hypothalamic pathways that couple ambient heat ↔ physiology ↔ feeding. Here’s the gist 👇
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Outside temperature affects our eating habits: when it’s warm, many of us eat less.
How does the brain link thermal state to appetite — and prevent overheating? ☀️🧠