How animals are driven to find food and the neurological and physiological processes that underlie the hunger response will be the topic of this month's Science in Medicine lecture, scheduled for noon, Thursday, March 11, in Hogness Auditorium, Room A-420 of the UW Health Sciences Center.

This year's WWAMI Science in Medicine Lecturer, Washington State University professor W. Sue Ritter, will give the presentation. The program, Feeding Your Hungry Brain, is free and open to everyone.

Ritter is a professor of veterinary and comparative anatomy, pharmacology and physiology at WSU's College of Veterinary Medicine. She is also a researcher in WSU's Programs in Neuroscience, and its Center for Reproductive Biology. Ritter has taught first-year UW medical students in the WWAMI Program at the University of Idaho/Washington State University.

Ritter studies how the nervous system integrates feeding behaviors, the consumption of nutrients, and the maintenance of body weight, as well as how this circuitry strives to reach a metabolic steady state.

Each year the UW School of Medicine sponsors an outstanding scientist from one of the other five universities in the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho) regionalized medical education program to come to the UW to give a presentation on his or her research and to meet with UW faculty, fellows, and students.