2005.9 – 2011.6 Ph.D. in Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University & National Institute of Biological Sciences
2001.9 – 2005.6 Bachelor in Wuhan University

2024.8 - present State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University
2022.2 - present Investigator in Chinese Institute of Brain Research
2017.7 - 2021.12 Research Scientist in Janelia Research Campus, HHMI
2013.7 - 2017.7 Postdoc in Janelia Research Campus, HHMI
2012.8 - 2013.5 Postdoc in Tsinghua University
2010.9-2012.3 Postdoc in National Institute of Biological Sciences,Beijing

Consumption behaviors are essential to life. In higher life-forms with appetite control, rather than being the so-called “innate behaviors”, feeding is much more adaptive. It often entails many learning components and reveals unanticipated complexity. Under such contexts, the consumption decision in feeding depends on the interactions between the nervous system, body, and environment. Therefore, under neural constraints, both external and internal elements determine what to eat, how much to eat and how often to eat. These elements often include not only hunger or satiety sensation but also perception to the food-related cues, internal references from previous consumption experiences and so on. Meanwhile, in modern society, our environment abounds with more and more high-palatable, high-calorie food, which dramatically shape our consumption habit: tasty food, food-related cues or memory of yummy food often easily drive to excessive food intake. Overexaggerating of food or food-associative cue perception has become one of the major contributors to obesity or obesity-related metabolic diseases in modern society, such as type II diabetes. The skewed adaptive consumption behavior is tightly linked to our current consumption experiences. And understanding the neuronal mechanism of it is important to set up the guideline towards healthy eating, fighting against obesity or obesity-related metabolic diseases. Based on that, our lab current focuses are (but not limited to) the following questions:
1. How does palatable food or beverage drive to excess intake beyond the metabolic need? How are the palatable information encoded in brain and how does it determine meal size mechanistically? How are palatable information involved in food-based learning and memory? And how does these learning components determine our food selection and preferences?
2. How are the reward properties of food transferred to food-associative external cues, for example, food advertisements and fast-food restaurants? How do these food-associative cues finally drive to overconsumption?
3. Any chances to reverse overconsumption habit driven by palatable food or food-associative cues/contexts? What are the molecular and neural circuit models of reversal?

1. Gong R, Xu S, Hermundstad AM, Yu Y, Sternson SM. Hindbrain double-negative feedback mediates palatability-guided food and water consumption. Cell, 2020 September 17; 182, 1-17

2. Betley JN, Xu S, Cao ZFH, Gong R, Magnus CJ, Yu Y, Sternson SM. Neurons for hunger and thirst transmit a negative-valence teaching signal. Nature, 2015 May 14; 521(7551):180-185.

3. Gong R*, Ding C*, Hu J*, Lu Y, Liu F, Mann E, Xu F, Cohen MB, Luo M. Role for the Membrane Receptor Guanylyl Cyclase-C in Attention Deficiency and Hyperactive Behavior. Science, 2011, 333, 1642-1646 (* equal contribution).