iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rachel Essner

@rachelessner.bsky.social

Neuroscientist 🧠. Runner 🏃🏻‍♀️. PhD from Harvard PiN. Williams College '16

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm thrilled to share the published version of our paper, now officially out in Neuron! Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1no8J3BtfH... One updated highlight: with new analyses we now show how functionally-defined groups of neurons putatively overlap with molecular cell types in LPBN

0113

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

6/ Thank you also to Hakan and Oren for their analysis wizardry, Sverre and Kristian for sharing the ribo-GCaMP8, and Teresa for her X-ray fluoroscopy expertise. I am also beyond grateful for @markandermann.bsky.social for all of his guidance, support, and excitement throughout the years.

020

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

5/ Huge thanks to Kiersten and Hannah (Team PBN!) – this project was a ton of work and could not have been done without them.

120

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

4/ Other spatially clustered LPBN neurons were sensitive to arousal and body movement. Together, our results define functional specialization in LPBN and highlight a platform for studying interoception during behavior. Check out the full manuscript for many other cool findings!

100

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

3/ Indeed, by imaging the same neurons across days, we found that Late Ensure neurons are sensitive to stomach stretch, malaise, and satiety signals. These Early vs. Late Ensure neurons were also spatially organized within LPBN.

100

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

2/ We coined neurons that became active at the onset of consumption as “Early Ensure neurons” and those that became active 1-3 s later as “Late Ensure neurons.” We suggest that Early Ensure neurons are sensitive to oral signals, while Late Ensure neurons are sensitive to post-ingestive signals.

100

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

1/ Food (Ensure) consumption drove a seconds-long wave of activity across LPBN, with dynamics that mirrored movement of food through the upper GI tract observed using X-ray fluoroscopy.

121

Rachel Essner @rachelessner.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I’m so excited to share our preprint on how brainstem neurons sense and integrate multiple body signals during food consumption. We imaged 1000s of neurons across the lateral parabrachial nucleus (LPBN) in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Brainstem sensing of multiple body signals during food consumption

Studies of body-to-brain communication often examine one stimulus or organ at a time, yet the brain must integrate many body signals during behavior. For example, food consumption generates diverse or...

1347