Researchers from Virginia Tech (USA) discovered that emotional eating, caused by changes in the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, is associated with the activity of the proenkephalin molecule. results published In the journal Nature.
Psychogenic overeating is an eating disorder that involves eating excessive amounts of food, leading to excess weight, and is a response to emotional stress. Scientists have tried to study the processes that occur in the brain when there is a desire to “seize” tension. To do this, they conducted an experiment using mice. In the laboratory, animals were exposed to the smell of cat feces; The sensation of a predator’s presence caused the rodents to experience stress for the next 24 hours.
Scans of the test subjects’ brains showed that, due to stress, some neurons became sensitive to the consumption of high-fat foods. It turns out that this is due to the activity of the proenkephalin molecule in the hypothalamus. To confirm this, the researchers artificially stimulated neurons in the brains of quiescent mice with light, leading to activation of the proenkephalin molecule. Rodents began to strive to consume more food even in the absence of emotional stress caused by the presence of a predator.
The researchers hope their discovery will contribute to the development of new treatments for emotional eating in humans. However, the details of how this particular molecule “works” remain to be investigated.
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