After eating, the brain cells will eat more and more. ~ Katja News

Can't eat too fat, after eating fat, the brain cells will eat more and more.

In the face of the gods and delicacies, the more you eat, the more you stop, and then you become a pig. This is an impressive scene at the beginning of Hayao Miyazaki's animated film "Spirited Away." Chihiro twitched her father and mother, who turned into a pig, anxiously shouting out

In real life, a variety of high-sugar, high-fat delicacies often make many people sink. Although it is not worried that the pig will be killed, according to a recent study published by the leading academic journal Science, eating too fat will really make the brain change! Neuroscientists have observed that long-term high-sugar and high-fat diets can alter nerve activity and gene expression, allowing mice to enter a vicious circle of eating more and more fat, getting fatter and more eating.

Neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill want to know what happens to the brain after eating fat. They focused on the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) in the mouse brain. This brain area is located at the bottom of the brain, coordinating many physiological functions of life and death, especially controlling appetite and eating behavior, which is equivalent to the appetite center in the brain.

There is a type of nerve cells in this brain area that releases signals after the animal feels full and stops the animal from eating. The researchers directly observed the activity of such neurons in drinking sugar water by living calcium imaging technology. It is clear that when mice are in different states of starvation and satiety, the activity of neurons is different. Specifically, when the mice drink syrup after eating, the activity of such neurons will become stronger, signaling that "enough". The researchers compared them to cell brakes that limit intake.

Two-photon calcium imaging was used to observe the activity of specific neurons in the lateral region of the hypothalamus in mice with sucrose water

However, after the researchers exchanged the common rat food for the high-sugar and high-fat rat diet, the mice in the lateral hypothalamic area of the mouse changed after eating for only 2 weeks. When mice drink syrup, the cell brakes seem to start to become less powerful.

Over time, after 12 weeks of high-sugar and high-fat diet, the body of the mice has become obese, and the activity of these neurons in the hypothalamus has been further weakened, and the response to sugar water has been reduced by about 80%. In other words, even if you have already eaten a lot, there is no sign of "stopping" in your brain when you drink sugar.

A continuous high-fat diet not only makes mice more and more fat but also makes the activity of specific neurons in the hypothalamus weaker and weaker

Behind the weakening of neural activity, the gene expression of these neurons has also changed significantly with obesity! Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the researchers compared pregnant mice with normal diets and obese mice with a 12-week high-sugar and high-fat diet, and how the genes in the hypothalamus differ in gene expression. It was found that in mice after obesity, there were indeed many types of cells that had changes in gene expression. Among them, the neurons that act as brakes are the most significant changes in gene expression!

After 12 weeks of high-sugar and high-fat diet, gene expression of many types of cells in the hypothalamus of mice showed significant changes

Consistent with animal experiments, the researchers found that changes in gene expression in these hypothalamic neurons are also closely related to the human body mass index (BMI).

This result suggests that humans can't control their mouths when they are faced with high-sugar and high-fat foods, and may be related to changes in neurons such as the hypothalamus. If this can be confirmed next, it may provide an important regulatory target for the treatment of eating disorders. For example, as the "Science" commentary said in the same period, "If you find a special receptor on this part of the brain in the future, you can try to selectively increase the activity of neurons with drugs" to help the brain appetite. Step on the brakes and stop eating in time.

Before that, we still first screamed with Chihiro: Don't eat too fat!

Source (Katja News)

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