Cell metabolism: a neural feedback mechanism affecting appetite

January 20, 2020 / BIOON / -- why do we hate certain foods? This is because signals from the gut to the brain lead to this aversion The traditional view is that there is a circuit in the brain that inhibits eating - it comes from the stomach, and if it is activated excessively, people will feel uncomfortable Now, a study of cell metabolism has found a second circuit in mice Dr Randy Seeley, director of the Michigan Center for nutritional obesity research, and the researchers tried to better understand which part of the brain suppresses appetite and which neurons play a role in making mice want to eat or not (image source: www Pixabay Com) appetite suppressing gut brain signals are triggered by a neuron that contains the calcitonin receptor (CALCR) This neuron exists in a kind of posterior brain structure called medulla oblongata Interestingly, these neurons don't need to be active in the brain to cause nausea in gastrointestinal diseases Because there are neurons that inhibit eating but also cause aversion, it must mean that there are different types of neurons or circuits in the brain that can stop eating with different emotional responses When the researchers inactivated the CALCR neurons, they were surprised to find that this contradicted the brain's idea of controlling only short-term meals Turning these neurons off not only interferes with the inhibition of intestinal signals on food intake, but also leads to a sustained increase in food intake Mice become obese, suggesting that the brainstem system controls not only how much they eat, but also how much they eat for a long time Because of the imbalance of energy (more input than output) in mice, this led to obesity Similarly, activation of the CALCR neurons reduced food intake and body weight in mice without gastrointestinal irritation In this study, the researchers found another neuron, CCK, which also reduced food intake and weight, but produced a disgusting internal response, unlike the CALCR neurons Obesity affects more than a third of the adult population in developed countries, which can lead to diabetes or other serious long-term health conditions, such as heart disease Many diet pills work, but they make people feel sick after taking them Obesity is still a disease that is difficult to treat with drugs because the therapeutic options are limited Drugs that turn on the "CALCR" function and turn off the "CGRP" function can greatly help obese patients by inhibiting eating and controlling food intake and weight for a long time "If we can find a drug for obese people that can inhibit food intake to produce long-term weight loss without negative side effects, it can definitely change people's lives." Sources of information: neuron found in mice could have implications for effective diet drugs original sources: Wenwen Cheng, Ian Gonzalez, Warren pan, Anthony h Tsang, Jessica Adams, ermelinda ndoka, desire Gordon, Basma Khoury, Karen Roelofs, Simon S Evers, Andrew MacKinnon, Shuangcheng Wu, Henriette frikke Schmidt, Jonathan n flak, James L Trevaskis, Christopher J Rhodes, So-ichiro Fukada, Randy J Seeley, Darleen A Sandoval, David P Olson, Clemence Blouet, Martin G Myers Calcitonin Receptor Neurons in the Mouse Nucleus Tractus Solitarius Control Energy Balance via the Non-aversive Suppression of Feeding Cell Metabolism , 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2019.12.012