Bart Hoebel is a Professor of Psychology, in the Program in Neuroscience, at Princeton University.

His academic degrees are an AB from Harvard University, PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and an honorary doctorate from the University Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

He is a past president of three societies: Div 6 of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior and the Eastern Psychological Association.

Having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, Professor Hoebel has been at Princeton ever since.  There he has conducted the research outlined below and raised a family of three with his wife Cindy. Bart is an avid skier and peace activist who also has raised trees by the thousand and built a hot air balloon and steam calliope, followed most recently by rebuilding a steamboat as a floating classroom to teach ecology. 

Research Interests
The central purpose of Hoebel’s laboratory research is to reveal principles of nervous system function in the control of motivated behavior patterns such as feeding and addiction. Projects focus on the brain’s reward and aversion mechanisms, which translate physiological signals into behavior.

Self-control of brain chemistry
Professors Hoebel’s laboratory has studied the effects of motivated behavior on the brain; specifically the effects of eating, electrical self-stimulation of the brain and amphetamine self-injection directly into the brain. Clearly, an animal performs these behaviors to control neurochemical release and neural circuit functions in its own brain.

Measurement of neural and chemical changes during wakeful behavior. Prof. Hoebel’s laboratory pioneered in the measurement of neurochemical release in local brain sites of freely moving animals. Fluids are collected by brain microdialysis and assayed by electrochemistry. For example they showed that dopamine is released by feeding, self-stimulation, drugs of abuse, including nicotine and alcohol, and by repeated bingeing on a sugar solution (soft drink).

Addiction Research. The Hoebel laboratory has discovered that drugs of abuse share a common withdrawal mechanism. In the nucleus accumbens, during withdrawal from nicotine, morphine, diazepam, alcohol and even sugar, acetylcholine levels are relatively high compared to dopamine. This is indicative of an aversive neurochemical state that the animals will work to avoid. Therefore it may be one cause of self-medication leading to drug relapse or breaking one's diet.

Sugar Addiction. Recent research is focused on the laboratory's mounting evidence for sugar dependency. Rats that binge on sugar develop signs of addiction, such as bingeing, sensitization, withdrawal and craving-like behavior. The researchers conclude that mild addiction is natural in that very sweet foods can lead to dependency under some conditions. Sugar triggers the production of the opioids. Dopamine tends to initiate food seeking, while opioids can prolong the meal. “We think that is a key to the addiction process,” Hoebel says. “The brain is getting addicted to its own opioids as it would to morphine or heroin. Drugs give a bigger effect, but it is essentially the same process.”

Summary. Drugs of abuse act on brain circuits for behavior reinforcement. Some of these circuits, such as dopamine and opioid pathways, are also used in food seeking and eating. Therefore, Professor Hoebel hypothesized that under certain conditions, such as repetitive, intermittent bingeing on very sweet food, feeding behavior might lead to a natural form of substance abuse. This animal model of food addiction may relate to binge eating disorder and bulimia in humans.