Human and Evolutionary Biology Section, Department of Biological Sciences, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Nat Commun. 2023 Mar 29;14(1):1755. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-37344-9.
The lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) integrates homeostatic processes and reward-motivated behaviors. Here we show that LHA neurons that produce melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) are dynamically responsive to both food-directed appetitive and consummatory processes in male rats. Specifically, results reveal that MCH neuron Ca activity increases in response to both discrete and contextual food-predictive cues and is correlated with food-motivated responses. MCH neuron activity also increases during eating, and this response is highly predictive of caloric consumption and declines throughout a meal, thus supporting a role for MCH neurons in the positive feedback consummatory process known as appetition. These physiological MCH neural responses are functionally relevant as chemogenetic MCH neuron activation promotes appetitive behavioral responses to food-predictive cues and increases meal size. Finally, MCH neuron activation enhances preference for a noncaloric flavor paired with intragastric glucose. Collectively, these data identify a hypothalamic neural population that orchestrates both food-motivated appetitive and intake-promoting consummatory processes.
外侧下丘脑区域（LHA）整合了体内平衡过程和奖励驱动的行为。在这里，我们表明，产生黑色素浓缩激素（MCH）的 LHA 神经元对雄性大鼠的食物导向的食欲和摄取过程具有动态反应。具体而言，结果表明，MCH 神经元 Ca 活性增加是对离散和上下文食物预测线索的反应，并且与食物驱动的反应相关。在进食过程中，MCH 神经元的活动也会增加，而这种反应高度预测了热量的消耗，并且在整个进食过程中会下降，从而支持 MCH 神经元在被称为食欲的积极反馈摄取过程中的作用。这些生理 MCH 神经反应具有功能相关性，因为化学遗传 MCH 神经元的激活促进了对食物预测线索的食欲行为反应，并增加了进餐量。最后，MCH 神经元的激活增强了对与胃内葡萄糖配对的无热量味道的偏好。总的来说，这些数据确定了一个下丘脑神经群体，该群体协调了食物驱动的食欲和促进摄入的摄取过程。
