- Department, Office, or School
- Department of Biology
- Associate Professor
- emailatoorie@ric.edu
- phone401-456-8010
- location_onFogarty Life Science
Education
Ph.D., Brown University.
Courses
BIOL 100 Fundamental concepts of Biology
BIOL 335 Human Physiology
BIOL 320 Cell and Molecular Biology
Research Interests
The Toorie lab focuses on identifying neural and endocrine mechanisms that are disrupted under conditions of metabolic stress. We induce metabolic stress by exposing rodents to obesogenic diets (i.e., high-fat/high-sugar diets) or drugs of abuse (i.e., opioids). Our lab examines the central reward and homeostatic centers in the rodent brain to identify both common and unique molecular targets (i.e., metabolic sensor proteins, neuropeptides, transcription factors, etc.) associated with addiction and/or the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome.