CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study of 55 women found that two of the most popular forms of bariatric surgery – Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy – may dramatically change patients’ sensitivity to and absorption of alcohol.
Some women’s sensitivity to alcohol increased so much after bariatric surgery that the amount they could consume before feeling the effects was reduced by half compared with their pre-surgery drinking habits, while others had reduced sensitivity, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found.
After consuming an alcoholic beverage that was equivalent to having two standard drinks, women who had gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy surgery experienced blood alcohol-concentration peaks sooner and about twice as high – 50% above the .08% blood alcohol content that’s the legal threshold for drunk driving in many states – compared with gastric band patients.
OH 2020
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More Department News
- Scientific and public appreciation for microbes — and the key role their communal actions play in environmental health, food production, and human wellness — has grown in recent years. While initially considered to be static, uniform entities, microbial communities are highly complex and contain internal chemical swapfests that are in constant flux.
- A black-and-white Boston terrier named Chevy, as sleek and dapper as a seal in a tuxedo, trots crisply into the soundproof testing room. His jaunty confidence will fade quickly as a team of researchers subjects him to a series of psychological experiments that will daunt, dismay, and ultimately baffle him. Poor Chevy is about to be gaslit for the sake of science. This spiffy little terrier is volunteer number one on day number one of an ambitious project launched by Harvard University evolutionary neuroscientist Erin Hecht to answer basic questions about what dogs do and why they do it. She plans to collect data on the psychology and behavior of hundreds of them across all breeds over many years: how easily they make friends, how well they behave, how they feel about vacuum cleaners. Four video cameras document Chevy’s reactions to an experimenter’s precisely scripted maneuvers. From a reception room next door, the rest of Hecht’s team watches through a one-way mirror.
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Faculty Spotlight
How would you describe your background? (I.E. where you are from? How did you first get interested in your area of research? Etc.) When I was an undergrad, I was a philosophy major and I was taking some psychology courses. I took a neuro-biology of learning and memory course, loved it, the professor then asked me to work in his lab which I decided to do. Two weeks after I started working in the lab, I said “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life” and that’s what I’ve been doing for the rest of my life. I didn’t take another philosophy class, I jumped ship, and took just neuroscience and psychology courses even though I was only two classes shy of completing the philosophy major. Yeah, I’ve been working on that ever since—the research I started doing as an undergrad is what I’m still doing now which is studying the brain basis of spatial memory, how our brains’ code the environments that we traverse, how this information is used to guide our actions of, say, getting from one place to another based on our memory of locations we’ve been to before. All this is done in rodent models using in vido electrophysiology.
Alumni Spotlight
What field in Neurosciencedid you study?What about the research process did you enjoy? Did you prefer gathering the data, brainstorming its meaning, the writing process, defending your research, presenting your research, etc. I studied auditory neuroscience, specifically how little brown bats process communication signals. I preferred the writing process, defending and presenting my research vs. gathering and analyzing data. I felt that the latter was quite tedious, and it was much more exciting once I was able to share my findings. Did you choose to continue doing research? Why or why not? I chose not to continue to do research for several reasons. I primarily felt my personality was better suited in a role where I was regularly meeting and interacting people, and lab research felt isolating. I also felt that due to the restraints and pressures of granting agencies, I would not be able to pursue the scientific questions that truly interested me. Do you still conduct research or has your career taken you other places? Why is that? I no longer conduct research. I made a few career changes, first into university technology transfer, then biotech sales, and now software sales. I was more interested in pursuing business activities and found more job opportunities in this area as well.