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Physiology of orexin: from nutrient sensing to decision making
Orexins are neuropeptide transmitters found in brains of all mammals.
From their location in the hypothalamus, orexin-producing neurons send their
axons to the entire CNS. Loss of these outputs produces intermittent failures in the basic
regulation of consciousness, as exemplified by intrusions of sleep into wakefulness
in orexin-deficient narcolepsy in humans. Orexin neurons “listen in” to brain activity
via monosynaptic inputs from many brain regions, and also to the energy state
of the body by direct sensing of dynamics of the extracellular macronutrients. They rapidly use this information
to compute and orchestrate our real-time arousal state, and sway fundamental decisions that impact our health,
such as the choice to perform voluntary exercise when other attractive options are available.
The talk will briefly review key findings of Burdakov lab in this area over the 20 years
(key references here: hest.ethz.ch/burdakov), and then focus on the following 3 recent works:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38773350
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.07.642010v3
www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01648-w
Date:
19 January 2026, 16:00
Venue:
Sherrington Building, off Parks Road OX1 3PT
Venue Details:
Event taking place in the Blakemore Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Dr Denis Burdakov (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)
Organiser:
Ivan Peckar (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
ivan.pekar@well.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Cortex Club (University of Oxford)
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Garry Cherepakhov
