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Credit: Elsevier, 2021
Philadelphia, April 6, 2021 - Since the discovery of leptin in the 1990s, researchers have wondered, how does leptin, a hormone made by body fat, suppress appetite? Despite tremendous gains in the intervening three decades, many questions still remain. Now, a new study in mice describes novel neurocircuitry between midbrain structures that control feeding behaviors that are under modulatory control by leptin. The study appears in
John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, said of the findings, Omrani and colleagues shed light on how, in non-obese animals, leptin puts the brakes on overeating.
Leptin acts as a critical link between the body and the brain, providing information about metabolic state and exerting control over energy balance. The importance of leptin is illustrated by the finding that animals deficient for leptin rapidly become obese without its regulatory stop on feeding behavior.
Rare mutations may have big impact on schizophrenia pathology
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Credit: Elsevier
Philadelphia, January 26, 2021 - Addiction, or substance use disorder (SUD), is a complex neurological condition that includes drug-seeking behavior among other cognitive, emotional and behavioral features. Synaptic plasticity, or changes in the way neurons communicate with one another, drives these addictive behaviors. These lasting brain changes are at the crux of why addiction is so hard to treat.
Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, now shows that players in the extracellular environment - not just at neuronal interfaces - contribute to addiction plasticity. Neurons in a brain area called the nucleus accumbens are known to undergo addiction-related plasticity. Specifically, changes at synapses of medium spiny neurons (MSN), which sense the neurotransmitter dopamine, have been associated with drug-seeking and extinction behaviors.
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Philadelphia, January 19, 2021 - Early life experiences can have an outsized effect on brain development and neurobiological health. New research is showing that those effects can be passed down to subsequent generations, reporting that the infant children of mothers who had experienced childhood emotional neglect displayed altered brain circuitry involved in fear responses and anxiety.
The study appears in These results show that our brain development is not only shaped by what happens in our own life, but is also impacted by things that happened to our parents before we were even conceived, said lead author of the study, Cassandra Hendrix, PhD, Department of Pyschology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
The relationship between TBI and PTSD has garnered increased attention in recent years as studies have shown considerable overlap in risk factors and symptoms, said lead author Murray Stein, MD, MPH, FRCPC, a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine & Public Health at the University of California San Diego, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. In this study, we were able to use data from TRACK-TBI, a large longitudinal study of patients who present in the Emergency Department with TBIs serious enough to warrant CT (computed tomography) scans.
The researchers followed over 400 such TBI patients, assessing them for PTSD at 3 and 6 months after their brain injury. At 3 months, 77 participants, or 18 percent, had likely PTSD; at 6 months, 70 participants or 16 percent did. All subjects underwent brain imaging after injury.
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