Nature sub-journal: Overeating is actually a pot of brain circuits.

"Impulse is the devil", but impulse control is the key to regulate behavior, impulse in many cases will quickly lead to negative consequences.the sudden surge in appetite makes you eat nearly a week's calories in one day, and you may not have thought that our overeating is really a brain problem.recently, a new study has identified specific circuits in the brain that alter food impulse, which may one day lead to the development of treatments for overeating. The findings were recently published in nature communications.the neurotransmitter regulation of melanin concentrating hormone (MCH) is the focus of this study.researchers have noticed MCH for many years, and the initial research focused on its role in controlling skin pigmentation.however, in the past few decades, MCH producing neurons have been shown to regulate the feeding behavior of animals.the researchers used a rat model to study the specific effects of the MCH pathway on impulse.in the experiment, rats were trained to press the joystick that released high-fat and high sugar particles, but they had to wait 20 seconds between pressing the lever twice. If the animal pressed the lever in advance, the timer would reset and it would have to wait 20 seconds again.the researchers then injected MHC into the rat brain to activate specific hypothalamic hippocampal neural pathways.the results showed that before the 20 second waiting time was over, the experimental animals would press the longitudinal bar more frequently and gradually become "unable to control themselves".Emily noble explains, "the underlying physiology in the brain is regulating your ability to refuse."in the experimental model, you can activate the circuit and obtain specific behavioral responses.we found that when MCH producing cells in the brain are activated, animals become more impulsive around food."Emily noble, the main author of the research paper. Source: University of Georgia news. Through further tests, it was found that the regulation of this specific MCH had no effect on taste, appetite or eating motivation.this means that the brain circuits may mainly affect the inhibitory control of animals.this special way of activating MCH neurons can increase impulsive behavior, but it does not affect normal eating due to caloric demand or motivation to eat delicious food.this may lead to the development of therapies for overeating that help people stick to their diet, rather than by reducing their normal appetite or the quality of their food.at the same time, this discovery opens up a new way to study other kinds of neuropsychological diseases related to impulse control.therefore, they hypothesized that if the MCH neural pathway can be pharmacological regulated, not only for obesity and overeating, but also for other diseases related to impulsive behaviors such as addiction or gambling, development research can be carried out on this basis.end reference: [1] hypthalamus hippocampus circuityregulates necessity via melanin concentrating hormone. [2]