![Unlocking Food Craving]()
The nucleus accumbens (NAc), a part of the brain associated with motivation and reward, may hold a key to understanding why people crave high-calorie foods. In a study published online on March 27 in eLife, Saleem M. Nicola, Ph.D., and his graduate student Kevin Caref found that the NAc’s naturally occurring opioids and opioid receptors activate neurons, which then promote the desire to eat palatable foods after animals reach satiety. In a series of trials, Dr. Nicola trained satiated and non-satiated rats to respond to cues indicating they’re about to receive high-fat food. He observed that the opioid system enhanced neuronal activity—and the desire to eat fatty foods—only in rats that were not hungry. The findings suggest that drugs that block the opioid receptors from stimulating neurons could potentially treat obesity. Dr. Nicola is an associate professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Einstein.
Posted on: Monday, April 23, 2018