Welcome to the O’BRAIN Lab

Welcome to the O’BRAIN Lab

The O’BRAIN Lab is a group of researchers inves­ti­gat­ing the inter­play between obe­si­ty and the brain.
Over­weight and obe­si­ty rates have risen steadi­ly in recent decades. Although many of us share sim­i­lar envi­ron­ments, only a few peo­ple become obese. How come? In our search for the cause, we are con­front­ed with a com­plex inter­play of many fac­tors: In addi­tion to the envi­ron­ment, behav­iour, brain func­tion, and genet­ic influ­ences deter­mine the deci­sions we make and thus ulti­mate­ly also our body weight.

Research

We try to answer fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about obe­si­ty: How does obe­si­ty devel­op? Why is it so hard to resist tempt­ing food? Does our brain deter­mine what and how much we eat? How does our nutri­tion shape our brain? Do changes with­in the brain make it so dif­fi­cult for us to break bad eat­ing habits? Last but not least: How can we help to improve eat­ing habits?

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Members

Our team is cur­rent­ly based in two places: Leipzig (Ger­many) and Helsin­ki (Fin­land). We bring togeth­er researchers from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines such as neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, and med­i­cine.

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Volunteer 🇩🇪

Wir suchen für eine aktuelle Studie:

gesunde Frauen (18–42 Jahre, hor­monell ver­hü­tend)

Es find­en wieder Tes­tun­gen statt. Es wurde ein umfan­gre­ich­er Kat­a­log von Hygien­e­maß­nah­men entwick­elt, um sowohl die Teil­nehmerIn­nen als auch das Per­son­al während der Exper­i­mente zu schützen. Wir suchen nach Per­so­n­en, die an unseren Stu­di­en teil­nehmen. Sie kön­nen unsere Forschung unter­stützen, indem Sie sich in unserem Proban­den­pool anmelden.

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Recent News

Delay to replication study

Delay to replication study

Dur­ing March we had the great news that the Dutch Research Coun­cil would fund an inter­na­tion­al repli­ca­tion study. Giv­en the cur­rent Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and the dis­rup­tion expe­ri­enced all over the world, a new start date has been set. We are hop­ing to start set­ting up from 1st Jan­u­ary 2021, with…

We are hiring

We are hiring

We are look­ing to hire a poten­tial PhD stu­dent in our lab in Leipzig. The project will sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly eval­u­ate dig­i­tal treat­ment pro­grammes for peo­ple with obe­si­ty. Dig­i­tal treat­ment approach­es offer great poten­tial for mod­ern, com­pre­hen­sive and inno­v­a­tive health care. As an exam­ple, the prod­uct zana­dio, devel­oped by the start-up aid­here, will be inves­ti­gat­ed;…

I like the smell of that

We are proud to present a new paper in our series on the rela­tion­ship of smell (per­cep­tion) and obe­si­ty. Maria Poes­sel and col­leagues explore how meta­bol­ic health sta­tus, in par­tic­u­lar insulin resis­tance, may play a key role in the altered per­cep­tion of smell across a large sam­ple of peo­ple with…