Eating disorder researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have discovered a neurocircuit in mice that, when activated, increased their stress levels while decreasing their desire to eat. Findings appear in Nature Communications.
The scientists believe their research could aid efforts to develop treatments for a serious eating disorder called anorexia nervosa, which has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. People with anorexia nervosa avoid food, severely restrict food, or eat very small quantities of only certain foods. Even when they are dangerously underweight, they may see themselves as overweight.
“We have identified a part of the brain in a mouse model that controls the impact of emotions on eating,” said Qingchun Tong, PhD, the study’s senior author and an associate professor in the Center for Metabolic and Degenerative Disease at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth.
Because mice and humans have similar nervous systems, Tong, the Cullen Chair in Molecular Medicine at UTHealth, believes their findings could shed light on the part of the human brain that regulates hunger.
Read more at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Image: UTHealth's Yuanzhong Xu, PhD, is studying the parts of the brain that affect hunger. (Credit: Photo by Rob Cahill/UTHealth)