High-fat food biases hypothalamic and mesolimbic expression of consummatory drives.

ABSTRACT: Maintaining healthy body weight is increasingly difficult in our obesogenic environment. Dieting efforts are often overpowered by the internal drive to consume energy-dense foods. Although the selection of calorically rich substrates over healthier options is identifiable across species, the mechanisms behind this choice remain poorly understood. Using a passive devaluation paradigm, we found that exposure to high-fat diet (HFD) suppresses the intake of nutritionally balanced standard chow diet (SD) irrespective of age, sex, body mass accrual and functional leptin or melanocortin-4 receptor signaling. Longitudinal recordings revealed that this SD devaluation and subsequent shift toward HFD consumption is encoded at the level of hypothalamic agouti-related peptide neurons and mesolimbic dop

SUBMITTER: Mazzone CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7529959 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature