Nature Metabolism: Control of diet in areas other than the brain!

With every meal you sit down to impress, pile up food in piles that you think is delicious, and then look for it, or avoid

How this decision is made is crucial to our well-being — deciding what foods we should look for and avoid — and these signals are coordinated by the most primitive part 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 Natural 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.

The new review paper, written by lead authors Wenwen Cheng, Dr.

"Combining all this information, we can predict which set of neurons controls this or that function

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

"There's a bunch of GLP1 neurons in the brainstem that if you turn them on, they'll stop eating but cause serious disease, but there may be another group of neurons that will stop eating but won't make you feel bad

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

Original title:

“Hindbrain circuits in the control of eating behaviour and energy balance,” Nature Metabolism.