NutriLab - News

Congratulations, Janina and Christoph, for receiving funding to develop a method for measuring insular activity to food stimuli with on scalp MEG! By coming closer to the head (and the neural sources therein) osMEG can achieve higher sensitivity and spatial precision compared to conventional MEG. By adapting this method to chemosensory stimulation, we aim to increase understanding for the mechanisms by which metabolic states regulate food perception.

The Cell is a new meeting place on the Karolinska campus, and part of the National Museum of Science and Technology.  It aims to create a meeting place where researchers, artists, students, schoolchildren, and the general public can learn, be inspired, explore, and discuss. This week, Janina participated in their event series "Scientist shows art", where she presented a sculpture of the artist Francesco Albano in the context of our research. In the sculpture, Albano aims to illustrate the emotions linked to having a close friend or relative with an eating disorder. The lively discussion that arose after the presentation showcased the importance of spaces like the cell for connecting arts and science. Thank you for the invitation, it was a true pleasure!

This week, we have had the pleasure to host Gabriela Ribeiro, Assistant Professor at Nova Medical University in Lisbon Portugal. Gabriela presented her exciting work on obesity and flavor-nutrient learning to us and spent the week shadowing different people in the group and discussing potential future collaborations. It was a pleasure to have you with us, Gabriela!

The Don Tucker Memorial Award recognizes a graduate student member of AChemS who makes an outstanding presentation at the annual AChemS meeting. Being nominated is a great honor and we are so proud of you, Andri!

The award will cover expenses up to 30.000 SEK and will allow Putu to visit the lab of Masako Okamoto, and learn more about methods to investigate spatiotemporal dynamics of odor representations in the human brain. Congratulations Putu!

Janina Seubert has received a Karolinska Institutet research grant of 150.000 SEK to fund research in 2024 and 2025. The research grant will be dedicated to extend our project on 'Dysregulated Anticipatory Reward Processing in Eating Disorders' to participants with binge eating disorder. Congratulations, Janina!

Congratulations, Janina, for receiving The Award for Research Excellence in the Psychophysics of Human Taste and Smell 2024! This grant is awarded annually by the Association of Chemreceptive Sciences (AChemS) to an outstanding junior scientist whose research record provides evidence of excellence and the promise to emerge as a leader in the field.

We congratulate Androula Savva for receiving an Erasmus+ staff training grant. She also received a travel grant from the European University of Brain and Technology, NeurotechEU. Karolinska Institutet is one of nine partner institutions forming the NeurotechEU alliance. The NeurotechEU travel grant can be used to visit one of the other partner institutions in order to plan and conduct new research projects. Androula will use these grants to visit the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and learn more about magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods and techniques.

At the annual StratNeuro retreat, Leonie Seidel won the Best Poster Award 2024. StratNeuro is the Strategic Research Area Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, Umeå University and KTH Royal Institute for Technology for integrating clinical and basic research. She also received the Best Poster Award during the annual department day of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute. Congratulations, Leonie!

Congratulations, Leonie, for receiving the travel grant of The European Chemoreception Research Organization (ECRO). With that grant, Leonie will present her work on the effect of attention on odor perception at The International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT) 2024.

Congratulations, Androula, for receiving a travel grant from Karolinska Institutet 2024! Androula will use the grant to travel to The International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT) 2024 to present her research on the effect of food odors on reward processing. 

Androula Savva received a travel grant from The European Chemoreception Research Organization (ECRO) to attend the ECRO annual meeting 2023 in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and present her work on a novel paradigm to study the effect of odors on reward processing.

Janina Seubert, researcher in psychology and PI of the Nutrilab, has been elected as member of The Young Academy of Sweden (Sveriges Unga Akademi) together with Karolina Kauppi, researcher in medical biology. The Young Academy of Sweden was established by the Royal Academy of Sweden and is an independent and interdisciplinary organization that gives young researchers a platform to contribute to research policy debate and communicate research to children and young people.