Highlights from the SSIB 2025 Annual Meeting in Oxford

The Soci­ety for the Study of Inges­tive Behav­ior (SSIB) suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed its 32nd Annu­al Meet­ing, held from July 28th to August 1st at the Math­e­mat­i­cal Insti­tute in Oxford, Unit­ed King­dom. This year’s meet­ing fea­tured a remark­able line­up of talks and pre­sen­ta­tions, address­ing cut­ting-edge research top­ics includ­ing the genet­ics of thin­ness, eat­ing behav­ior in chil­dren, food inse­cu­ri­ty and the micro­bio­me, social influ­ences on eat­ing, and the phys­i­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of life’s great plea­sures: eating.

Esteemed speak­ers includ­ed Sadaf Farooqi from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, UK; John I. Glendin­ning, Ann Whit­ney Olin Pro­fes­sor of Biol­o­gy at Barnard Col­lege, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty; Mar­i­on M. Het­her­ing­ton from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds and Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty; Daniel Net­tle from Insti­tut Jean Nicod, CNRS, Paris, France; John Cryan from Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Cork, Ire­land; and Suzanne Hig­gs from the School of Psy­chol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham, UK.

The OBRAIN Lab was proud­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the meet­ing with a poster pre­sen­ta­tion by alum­ni Fil­ip Morys (McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, MNEURO) and Hen­drik Hart­mann, show­cas­ing their work on “Struc­tur­al brain dif­fer­ences in meta­bol­i­cal­ly healthy and meta­bol­i­cal­ly unhealthy obe­si­ty in the UK Biobank sample.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, Arsene Kanyamib­wa deliv­ered an engag­ing 12-minute pre­sen­ta­tion on “Ultra­processed food con­sump­tion affects struc­tur­al integri­ty of feed­ing-relat­ed brain regions inde­pen­dent of and via adi­pos­i­ty,” spark­ing thought­ful dis­cus­sions among attendees.

The meet­ing cul­mi­nat­ed in a mem­o­rable ban­quet held at the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry in Oxford, where sev­er­al awards were pre­sent­ed, cel­e­brat­ing out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the field. The evening pro­vid­ed a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for net­work­ing and reflec­tion on the inspir­ing advance­ments shared through­out the conference.

The OBRAIN Lab extends its grat­i­tude to all par­tic­i­pants for mak­ing the 2025 Annu­al Meet­ing a resound­ing suc­cess for our Attendee (Arsene). We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our explo­ration of inges­tive behav­ior and fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in this vibrant sci­en­tif­ic community.

Zach, Fil­ip , Gol­naz , Eliz­a­beth, Arashdeep , Justin, Arsene , Jessica 
From right to left: Daniel, Arashdeep, Fil­ip, Arsene