Dr. Laugero, a California native, received a Bachelor's degree in biological science from California State University Fresno and a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California, Davis.  As a National Research Service Award NIH Fellow, Dr. Laugero received his postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco where he studied the interrelationships between chronic stress, neuroendocrine function, and energy metabolism.  Subsequently, he spent 4 years in the biotechnology industry as a drug discovery scientist at Amylin Pharmaceuticals.  Recently, Dr. Laugero joined the WHNRC as a Nutritionist studying neurobehavioral aspects of eating behavior and developing nutritional based interventions aimed at facilitating long term adoption of the Dietary Guidelines.

Research Interests

     The overarching objective of Dr. Laugero’s research is to understand the impact of diets and foods on food choice, and how foods switch off the response to psychological stress.  In another aspect, Dr. Laugero’s research aims to understand the role and underpinnings of chronic psychosocial stress in dysfunctional eating behaviors, particularly as they relate to obesity and the metabolic syndrome.  In his research program, he is using a multidimensional approach to yield key information that will (1) help identify specific barriers to adopting the Dietary Guidelines (DG), (2) be applied to the development of new strategies that facilitate the adoption of the DG, (3) test nutritional interventions designed to increase long term compliance of the DG and promote healthy body weight, and (4) expose metabolic signatures that might be used clinically to predict neurobehavioral functions (i.e., a metabolome of behavior) related to eating behavior.

     Dr. Laugero's previous work revealed a novel metabolic-brain pathway that provides a new perspective on why it is generally very difficult to restrict food intake and maintain a reduced body weight over the long term, especially in persons or populations of people susceptible to and undergoing psychological stress.  Psychological stress has profound effects on eating behavior and precipitates dietary relapse.  Studies suggest that chronic psychological stress, through the actions of increased glucocorticoid activity, promotes the ingestion of highly palatable, energy dense foods, which is especially salient given the current climate of palatable food abundance and increasing social stress in our society.  New information describing the more subtle progression of neuroendocrine and metabolic adjustments that occur in response to chronic psychological stress in an obesogenic environment is scarce and this information seems critical if we are to better understand the key factors that trigger and perpetuate obesity and potentially other stress-related conditions that are characterized by glucocoticoid and metabolic dysregulation. 

     Targeted at many points along his newly identified metabolic-brain axis, several approaches (e.g., functional brain imaging, metabolomics, neuroendocrinology) are being used to study in animals and humans the bi-directional relationship between chronic psychosocial stress and nutritional behavior. The overarching objective of this research is to create and test nutrition based interventions and drive other strategies that mitigate the effects of chronic stress on and facilitate long term changes in nutritional behavior critical to physical as well as mental health.  Dr. Laugero currently enlists several methods to measure stress-induced eating behavior and through a combination of experimental approaches that include the assessment of an individual's neural (fMRI), metabolomic, behavioral, neuroendocrine, and eating response to an applied laboratory psychosocial stress challenge, he is currently testing whether increased physical activity in obese persons reduces the effects of chronic stress on eating behavior and energy metabolism.  In another aspect, Dr. Laugero's current research is aimed at identifying metabolic profiles or signatures that help to (1) predict neurobehavioral functions that increase the risk of dietary relapse and weight gain and regain, and (2) measure the therapeutic value of different nutritional interventions.

Research Accomplishments

·         Discovered a new glucocorticoid-metabolic-brain feedback regulatory pathway that prompted an entirely new model of chronic psychological stress and glucocorticoid function.  These findings elicit a new perspective on why it has been so difficult to motivate long term adoption of the Dietary Guidelines and body weight following restricted food intake and body weight loss.

·         Discovered in animal models the anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like actions of the pancreatic, metabolic peptide hormone, amylin.  Dr. Laugero's findings, which support his newly described regulatory pathway, demonstrated a novel action of the peptide hormone and strongly imply that endogenous amylin might mitigate stress-induced eating patterns and stress-induced dietary relapse or palatable food craving by modulating neural pathways that mediate the neuroendocrine, autonomic, and behavioral responses to chronic stress.  This and subsequent research led to two patent applications and contributed to the creation of a new company, Psylin Pharmaceuticals.