Overeating of highly palatable food is a major contributing factor to obesity and related health complications. For women in particular, negative emotions such as stress, frustration, anxiety, and loneliness have been shown to strongly influence eating behaviour and bingeing episodes. Despite this knowledge there is a paucity of research investigating the neurobiology underlying emotional and stress related bingeing, particularly in female subjects. This is primarily due to a lack of suitable animal models and the historical focus of neuroscientific studies on male subjects. Dr Brown will describe a model of emotional stress-induced binge eating she has developed in mice that does not depend on caloric restriction, a behaviour that she has observed specifically in female mice. This behaviour is not oestrogen-dependent as it is not impacted by ovariectomy. Dr Brown will describe the neural correlates and putative networks driving this behaviour with a focus on the insular cortex.