Sugar Is Processed Differently in the Brains of Obesity-Prone vs. Obesity-Resistant Rats - Neuroscience News

“People don’t tend to find it difficult to turn down an extra serving of broccoli, but just one more french-fry or making room for a bit of chocolate dessert… that’s a different story.

Their latest study, published in the Journal of Neurochemistry, tracked what was happening in real time in the brain when these animals were presented with glucose, a type of sugar, labeled with a tracer.

Ferrario added, “The balance between glutamate and GABA (the main inhibitory transmitter) is really important for brain function and will influence activity of the neurons in the nucleus accumbens.”

Other authors on the paper include Kathryn M. Nesbitt, Victoria M. Addis, Keenan M. Boulnemour, Daniel A. Micheli, Kendall B. Smith, Darleen A. Sandoval, and Robert T. Kennedy.

Studies from human and rodent models suggest that inherent differences in the function of brain motivation centers, including the nucleus accumbens (NAc), contribute to overeating and thus obesity.

Here we gave obesity-prone and obesity-resistant rats stable isotope-labeled glucose ( 13 C 6-glucose) and used liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC–MS) analysis of NAc dialysate to examine the real-time incorporation of 13 C 6-glucose into glutamate, glutamine, and GABA.