Topic: body weight

The regulation of body weight relies on homeostatic mechanisms that use a combination of internal signals and external cues to initiate and terminate food intake. Homeostasis depends on intricate communication between the body and the hypothalamus involving numerous neural and hormonal signals. However, there is growing evidence that higher-level cognitive function may also influence energy balance. For instance, research has shown that BMI is consistently linked to various brain, cognitive, and personality measures, implicating executive, reward, and attentional systems. Moreover, the rise in

It is clear that the cause of obesity is a result of eating more than you burn. It is physics. What is more complex to answer is why some people eat more than others? Differences in our genetic make-up mean some of us are slightly more hungry all the time and so eat more than others. We now know that the genetics of body-weight, on which obesity sits on one end of the spectrum, is in actuality the genetics of appetite control. In contrast to the prevailing view, body-weight is not a choice. People who are obese are not bad or lazy; rather, they are fighting their biology.

In rodent models with intracranial tumor formation, severity assessment and humane endpoint determination are fundamental for ethical and legal reasons. We here evaluated whether voluntary wheel running (VWR) would enable classification of severity after surgery for subcutaneous transmitter-implantation, intracranial tumor-cell-injection and resection, as well as humane endpoint detection. VWR behavior was compared to body weight, clinical state, together with heart rate (HR) and activity (Act) generated via transmitter. Male BDIX rats (n=14) were single-housed in cages equipped with a running

Hypothalamic agouti-related peptide (AgRP)-expressing neurons are exclusively located in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus and form the basis of the melanocortin system, a set of CNS circuits regulating energy homeostasis. Besides an important role in driving food intake, AgRP neurons are also involved in modulating complex, non-feeding behaviors. However, it is unknown how AgRP-dependent feeding influences general exploratory behavior. Using the AgRPDTR mouse model with impaired AgRP neuronal functions, we show here that perturbation of AgRP neuronal function leads to sex-dependent body

The arcuate nucleus (ARC) is a significant brain region involved in energy homeostasis, specifically feeding behaviour. It is widely reported that nicotine consumption reduces feeding behaviour and body weight in both humans and rodents. Milleu et al. (2011) demonstrated that nicotine increases the activity of the Pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) positive cells in this nucleus. Huang et al. (2011) reported that nicotine increases the activity of POMC cells and NPY-positive cells. This finding may seem contradictory as NPY neurons promote hunger signals while POMC neurons generate signals of satiety