iEAT – Food pleasure, appetite and eating behaviour
Applicants are invited for a PhD fellowship/scholarship at Graduate School of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the Food Science programme. The position is available from 01 July 2024 or later.
How to apply: Please follow this link to submit your application.
Application deadline: 18 April 2024 at 23:59 CEST
Research area and project description:
The PhD project takes its basis in the pivotal role of hedonia, understood as the ability to feel pleasure, for human appetite and food choices.
There is a growing evidence that the ability to perceive pleasure and the aspects driving pleasure varies across segments of consumers and plays a crucial role in human food choice and intake behaviours.
The human reward system can be qualitatively and quantitatively disturbed, resulting in altered food preferences and food seeking behaviour underpinning unhealthy lifestyles. As food is an inexpensive resource for providing reward, palatable food consumption can serve as a feed-forward mechanism, where food is (subconsciously) chosen as relief from discomfort, bringing pleasure and increasing sensitization of reward pathways, which in turn influences future food preferences and intake.
The anhedonic (inability to feel pleasure) elements underlying food behavioural changes may contribute to unhealthy eating and obesity, and needs to be understood better both due to the theoretical interpretation of the mechanisms involved, and for the prediction of the harmful effects of anhedonia on health.
The current PhDwill explore individual differences in (an)hedonic traits, the translation into pleasure from eating-related experiences, and the role of (an)hedonia in food choice, appetite and eating-related well-being.
Studies will be conducted among undiagnosed and diagnosed populations, to clarify normal occurring differences in pleasure perceptions, the link between anhedonia, pleasure from eating and food behaviour.
The project is expected to bring new fundamental knowledge on eating-related pleasure, build-on and advance the current understanding of the role of (an)hedonia and pleasure in human appetite and eating behaviour.
Project description. For technical reasons, you must upload a project description. Please simply copy the project description above and upload it as a PDF in the application.
Contacts:
Applicants seeking further information are invited to contact:
- Professor and Science Team Leader Derek V. Byrne, Derekv.byrne@food.au.dk (main supervisor)