Medical research

Why diets don't work? Starved brain cells eat themselves

A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it's so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don't eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits ...

Neuroscience

Brain's immune cells may drive overeating and weight gain

Immune cells in the brain trigger overeating and weight gain in response to diets rich in fat, according to a new study in mice led by researchers from UC San Francisco and the University of Washington Medical Center, and ...

Neuroscience

Study finds enzyme in the brain is a 'metastat' for body weight

An enzyme found in the brain acts as a major regulator of body weight, Yale researchers have discovered. In a new study, they found that removing the enzyme from neurons in a part of the brain known as the hypothalamus led ...

Neuroscience

Untangling the brain's life-support network

The portion of the brain known as the hypothalamus is small but mighty—it controls fundamental behaviors and physiology that are essential for survival. These include eating and drinking, sexual and defensive behaviors, ...

Neuroscience

Gamma oscillations coordinate food seeking

Food seeking is a crucial survival instinct. However, until recently, little was known about how the brain regulates this behavior. Scientists at the Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) and NeuroCure Cluster ...

Neuroscience

Researchers discover the seat of sex and violence in the brain

As reported in a paper published online today in the journal Nature, Caltech biologist David J. Anderson and his colleagues have genetically identified neurons that control aggressive behavior in the mouse hypothalamus, a ...

Neuroscience

Nature or nurture? Innate social behaviors in the mouse brain

Adult male mice have a simple repertoire of innate, or instinctive, social behaviors: When encountering a female, a male mouse will try to mate with it, and when encountering another male, the mouse will attack. The animals ...

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