Christopher A Zimmerman, PhD

Christopher A Zimmerman, PhD

NIH BRAIN Initiative K99 Fellow

Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Biography

I study how interoceptive signals from the body remodel brainwide neural circuitry and representations to support learning and memory and promote long-lasting changes in behavior — with the goal of understanding the general principles for how learning and motivation algorithms are implemented in the brain and how these neural computations give rise to basic elements of human experience.

Currently: I am a postdoctoral fellow in Ilana Witten’s lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. My recent work addresses a long-standing mystery about learning from gut-to-brain signals: How is the brain able to associate flavors experienced during a meal with postingestive effects, like food poisoning, that arise minutes or hours later? We discovered that delayed malaise signals reactivate and stabilize the amygdala’s representation of recently consumed novel flavors, which provides a neural mechanism to resolve the credit assignment problem in postingestive learning and shows how the common phrase we associate with unexpected nausea — “it must be something I ate” — is hard-wired into the brain.

Previously: I was a graduate student in Zachary Knight’s lab in the UCSF Department of Physiology. My thesis focused on the neural mechanisms that govern thirst and drinking behavior. We discovered that sensory signals originating throughout the body — including from the mouth, throat, and gut — converge onto individual “thirst neurons” in the forebrain during eating and drinking, which allows these cells to predict changes in hydration before they occur and adjust drinking preemptively. This, in turn, provides a neural explanation for long-enigmatic aspects of everyday human behavior, including the rapid speed of thirst satiation, the thirst-quenching power of oral cooling, and the prevalence of drinking during meals.

Key Publications

Complete list of publications available at Google Scholar.
*
A neural mechanism for learning from delayed postingestive feedback. bioRxiv, 2023.
Heightened lateral habenula activity during stress produces brainwide and behavioral substrates of susceptibility. Neuron, in press & bioRxiv, 2023.
Neuroscience: Secretin excites the thirst circuit. Current Biology 32, R1318⁠–⁠R1320, 2022.
The origins of thirst. Science 370, 45⁠–⁠46, 2020.
Layers of signals that regulate appetite. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 64, 79⁠–⁠88, 2020.
A gut-to-brain signal of fluid osmolarity controls thirst satiation. Nature 568, 98⁠–⁠102, 2019.
The forebrain thirst circuit drives drinking through negative reinforcement. Neuron 96, 1272⁠–⁠1281, 2017.
Neural circuits underlying thirst and fluid homeostasis. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 18, 459⁠–⁠469, 2017.
Thirst neurons anticipate the homeostatic consequences of eating and drinking. Nature 537, 680⁠–⁠684, 2016.

Honors & Awards

National Institute on Drug Abuse
BRAIN Initiative Advanced Postdoctoral Career Transition Award
McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience
Allison J Doupe Fellowship
Helen Hay Whitney Foundation
Postdoctoral Fellowship
Society for Neuroscience
Donald B Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Harold M Weintraub Graduate Student Award
Winter Conference on Brain Research
Travel Fellowship
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
National Research Service Award Predoctoral Fellowship
Genentech Foundation
Predoctoral Fellowship
University of California San Francisco
Discovery Fellowship
National Science Foundation
Graduate Research Fellowship

Press & Media

Naked Neuroscience Podcast
How does thirst work in the brain?
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Real-time signals from body to brain help regulate sensation of thirst
*Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology*
A thirst-quenching gut–brain signal
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Your gut controls your thirst and keeps your brain informed
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Thirst controlled by signal from the gut
University of California San Francisco
Had enough water? Brain’s thirst centers make a gut check
University of California San Francisco
New understanding of thirst emerges from brain study

Contact

  • czimmerman@princeton.edu
  • Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Room 184E