Professor Ilona Grunwald Kadow

Animals constantly need to adapt their behavior to changing circumstances. What they do depends not only on what they see, smell or otherwise perceive in their environment, but also on their internal state. Hunger, fatigue, reproductive state and other physiological conditions can change how sensory information is processed and which actions an animal chooses.

Grunwald Kadow investigates how the nervous system integrates these internal signals with information from the outside world. Her research connects processes at different levels, from molecular and physiological mechanisms to neural circuits and the behavior of the whole animal.

A particular focus of her recent research is communication between the brain and other organs. Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, her team has investigated how adipose tissue communicates with neural circuits involved in learning and food choice. Their work shows how signals originating outside the brain can influence neural processing and contribute to adaptive behavior.

Read the full press release here.

• Ilona Grunwald Kadow

  Max Planck Fellow

  
  Ilona.grunwald@uni-bonn.de