(no subject)
Apr. 3rd, 2004 03:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheStudy: Fat Hormone Rewires Brain
Leptin, a hormone that affects weight and appetite, apparently helps wire the brain in ways that might set an animal on a lifetime path to slenderness or obesity, two teams of U.S. researchers said Thursday.
The findings might also help explain why the food a person eats when very young, or even what a mother eats while pregnant, affects weight, heart disease and other aspects of metabolism later in life.
And they help shed light on why it is so hard for many people to lose weight and keep it off.
In one study, a team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller University and at Yale University, found that leptin affects both the physical structure and the function of neural circuits in the brain.
“This is a very dynamic effect that’s quite dramatic and somewhat surprising. In response to leptin, the cells create new connections,” said Rockefeller’s Dr. Jeffrey Friedman.
“The malleability of these feeding circuits by leptin suggest the possibility that the brain’s wiring may be different in lean versus obese individuals,” Friedman added in a statement.
[...] Brain circuits there were less developed in mice genetically engineered to make no leptin compared to normal mice. Injecting baby mice with leptin restored normal brain structure, they found.
“We’re excited about this finding because it shows how exposure to leptin can directly affect development of brain structures involved in regulating body weight,” Simerly said in a statement.
“Our findings suggest a link between the developmental actions of leptin and early onset obesity,” he added.
“We were shocked by how clear the result was. Leptin plays an important role in brain development, by acting specifically on the clusters of brain cells that regulate food intake.”
The findings may help explain how some people seem to have a body weight “set point” -- “until now a nebulous concept in search of a mechanism,” said Joel Elmquist and Jeffrey Flier of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The findings support “the concept that under- and over-nutrition during critical periods of hypothalamic (brain) development may induce long-lasting and potentially irreversible effects into adulthood,” they wrote in a commentary in Science.
Leptin, a hormone that affects weight and appetite, apparently helps wire the brain in ways that might set an animal on a lifetime path to slenderness or obesity, two teams of U.S. researchers said Thursday.
The findings might also help explain why the food a person eats when very young, or even what a mother eats while pregnant, affects weight, heart disease and other aspects of metabolism later in life.
And they help shed light on why it is so hard for many people to lose weight and keep it off.
In one study, a team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller University and at Yale University, found that leptin affects both the physical structure and the function of neural circuits in the brain.
“This is a very dynamic effect that’s quite dramatic and somewhat surprising. In response to leptin, the cells create new connections,” said Rockefeller’s Dr. Jeffrey Friedman.
“The malleability of these feeding circuits by leptin suggest the possibility that the brain’s wiring may be different in lean versus obese individuals,” Friedman added in a statement.
[...] Brain circuits there were less developed in mice genetically engineered to make no leptin compared to normal mice. Injecting baby mice with leptin restored normal brain structure, they found.
“We’re excited about this finding because it shows how exposure to leptin can directly affect development of brain structures involved in regulating body weight,” Simerly said in a statement.
“Our findings suggest a link between the developmental actions of leptin and early onset obesity,” he added.
“We were shocked by how clear the result was. Leptin plays an important role in brain development, by acting specifically on the clusters of brain cells that regulate food intake.”
The findings may help explain how some people seem to have a body weight “set point” -- “until now a nebulous concept in search of a mechanism,” said Joel Elmquist and Jeffrey Flier of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The findings support “the concept that under- and over-nutrition during critical periods of hypothalamic (brain) development may induce long-lasting and potentially irreversible effects into adulthood,” they wrote in a commentary in Science.