Oldfield Laboratory
Metabolic Neuroscience
Welcome to the Oldfield Lab
The lab has three major programs centred on metabolic neuroscience that encompass interests in brown fat biology, the neurobiological underpinnings of metabolic surgery and anorexia nervosa.
We're part of the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, and a member of the Metabolism, Diabetes & Obesity and Neuroscience Programs, and the Department of Physiology.
Professor Brian Oldfield
My global research connections, partners and funding can be viewed on my Monash Research Profile.
If you are a student interested in doing research in our lab, visit Supervisor Connect.
Click the links below to connect with me on Twitter, ORCID, Google Scholar and LinkedIn.
Our research
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A: Brown Fat Biology and its role in the control of body weight.
Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT) is now recognised as an important contributor to body weight in adult humans and levels of activated BAT are inversely correlated with obesity. Our efforts are directed at understanding, then utilising, the neural pathways that promote its recruitment leading to weight loss.
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B: Animal models of bariatric (weight loss) surgery.
The common forms of bariatric surgery such as Roux en Y gastric bypass and Sleeve Gastrectomy provide the only means by which extensive and durable weight loss can be achieved; however, the mechanisms that underpin this success are poorly understood. Through rodent models of this surgery we interrogate such mechanisms with the ultimate aim of finding non-surgical solutions to obesity.
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C: Rodent models of Anorexia Nervosa used to study pathological weight loss with implications for normal body weight control and related motivated behaviours.
Anorexia Nervosa is a devastating condition that has a neurobiological as well as a socio-psychological basis. Despite the fact that it continues to have a profound impact on the mortality of young women we are only starting to understand its neurobiological underpinnings. We study these mechanisms in rodent models of the disorder with a view to discovering therapies and more generally to understand the nature of related motivated behaviours.
Lab members
We are committed to excellence in research.
Join Our Lab
We're always interested in collaborating with bright and motivated researchers, clinicians and industry. Whether you want to research, study or partner with us to accelerate our discoveries, find out about the work we do.