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Léa Décarie-Spain (PhD candidate, Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, CRCHUM, Canada) from May 13th to August 9th, 2019

 Stéphanie Fulton (Professor, CRCHUM, Canada) from July 1st to August 17^th, 2019 

Aim of the collaboration: 

Recent work from the Fulton lab (CRCHUM, Canada) demonstrates high-fat diet-(HFD) induces anxiodepressive behaviours in adult mice, and these are modulated by neuroinflammatory processes within the ventral striatum (Décarie-Spain et al., Mol Metab, 2018). Guillaume Ferreira’s (NutriNeuro, Bordeaux) findings highlight cognitive deficits and hippocampal alterations when a HFD regime is initiated at the juvenile stage but not adulthood (Boitard et al., 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016).

We took advantage of Guillaume Ferreira’s visit to the Fulton lab in Montreal (July 2017 to April 2018) to initiate, with the assistance of doctoral student Léa Décarie-Spain, a collaborative study investigating the anxiodepressive and cognitive consequences of HFD feeding in regards the developmental period at which diet exposure begins.

Our results suggest that, unlike exposure to the HFD at adulthood, ventral striatum inflammation and enhancement of anxiodepressive behaviours are not observed in our juvenile model, while cognitive performance is altered. These age-specific alterations support a double dissociation of cognitive versus affective impairments following HF feeding as a function of developmental stage at time of exposure. Léa and Stephanie’s visit to Guillaume’s lab in Bordeaux (May to August 2019) aims to identify the mechanisms underlying the differential modulation of cognitive and affective functions by HF diet exposure at the juvenile stage versus adulthood.

 Funding: 

Léa Décarie-Spain : internship funding, Réseau de recherche en santé CardioMétabolique, Diabète et Obésité (CMDO) des Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS), and student mobility financial  support, Les offices jeunesse internationaux du Québec (LOJIQ).

Stéphanie Fulton : sabbatical financial support from LabEx BRAIN.