We use the young pig as a translational model for the human infant to understand how early-life nutrition shapes the developing brain.
The Piglet Nutrition & Cognition Laboratory (PNCL) is a high-throughput facility built to artificially rear newborn piglets and conduct behavioral testing — with capacity for 48 piglets, a dedicated suite for eye-blink conditioning and novelty-preference tasks, automated individualized feeding, and 24/7 home-cage video. Our central question is how early-life diet helps shape the microbiota-gut-brain axis: the development of a stable microbiota, immunity, and gut and brain function.
Early-life nutrition and brain development
We test how milk bioactives and key nutrients influence brain structure, myelination, and cognition in the developing pig — translating findings toward infant nutrition.
- Early-life nutrition and neurodevelopment: use of the piglet as a translational model
- Human and bovine milk oligosaccharides elicit improved recognition memory concurrent with alterations in regional brain volumes and hippocampal mRNA expression
- Impact of arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acid supplementation on neural and immune development in the young pig
- Influence of 2′-fucosyllactose and Bifidobacterium longum subspecies infantis supplementation on cognitive and structural brain development in young pigs
- Early-life supplementation of bovine milk osteopontin supports neurodevelopment and influences exploratory behavior
Nutrition and the microbiota–gut–brain axis
Our central emphasis: how early-life diet shapes the gut microbiota and, in turn, brain chemistry, myelination, and behavior.
- Serum cortisol mediates the relationship between fecal Ruminococcus and brain N-acetylaspartate in the young pig
- Prebiotics and bioactive milk fractions affect gut development, microbiota, and neurotransmitter expression in piglets
- A mediation analysis to identify links between gut bacteria and memory in context of human milk oligosaccharides
- Early-life iron deficiency and subsequent repletion alters development of the colonic microbiota in the pig
- Experimentally induced colitis impacts myelin development and home-cage behavior in young pigs regardless of supplementation with oral gamma-cyclodextrin-encapsulated tributyrin
Neuroimaging and cognition methods
We build the imaging atlases, behavioral paradigms, and analysis tools that make the pig a rigorous model for developmental neuroscience.
- Epigenetic MRI: Noninvasive imaging of DNA methylation in the brain
- High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging-based atlases for the young and adolescent domesticated pig (Sus scrofa)
- Establishing the pig as a translational animal model for neurodevelopment
- Validating an updated protocol for the novel object recognition task in young pigs
- Developing a reference database for typical body and organ growth of the artificially reared pig as a biomedical research model