"Nature" sub-issue: brain "diet map", fat and thin can move with the heart!

How we make this decision is crucial to our well-being — deciding what foods to look for and avoid — so much so that these signals are coordinated in the most primitive parts of our brainstem or hindbrain

To date, scientists have become interested in how and why people gain weight, as well as the diseases that overeating and obesity can lead to, and they have focused on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, after discovering two intertwined systems, the leptin system and the melanin cortical system, which play an important

A paper in the journal Nature Metabolism studied areas outside of this brain region and reviewed various brain pathways that meet in the brainstem to control eating behavior, using a technique

"Everything the hypothalamus does eventually converges on the brainstem

The recent review builds on recent findings in mice in Miles' lab that reveal the existence of two different brainstem circuits that inhibit food intake — one that causes nausea and disgust and the other that doesn't, as he found in collaboration with colleague Dr.

They combined these findings with other recent findings to build a new model of brainstem neural circuits and how they control food intake and nausea

He notes that many of these cell populations are targets for new, effective diet pills — for example, a class of drugs called GLP1 receptor agonists to treat diabetes that lower blood sugar and help you eat

Myers explained that having a detailed map of these neurons and understanding the effects of modifying these cellular targets could help make drugs

Wenwen Cheng, Desiree Gordian, Mette Q.