Research on feeding and anxiety regulation published in Cell Reports
Recent research from the lab of Qingchun Tong, PhD, professor in the Center for Metabolic Degenerative Diseases and Cullen Chair in Molecular Medicine, on the ability of emotion neurons in the brain to regulate feeding and anxiety has been published in Cell Reports.
Research for the paper, titled “Lateral septum as a melanocortin downstream site in obesity development,” was led by Yuanzhong Xu, PhD, assistant professor in the Tong Laboratory. Contributing authors include Zhiying Jiang, PhD; Yong Xu, MD, PhD; Benjamin Arenkiel, PhD; and Tong.
The research focused on the melanocortin receptor 4 gene (MC4R), which is located in the hypothalamus and regulates feeding and body weight and is the most frequent monogenic obesity-causing gene in humans.
A combination of viral vector delivery and metabolic phenotyping was used to collect data in preclinical murine models with specific manipulations in neurons. Through the data collection, the team discovered a neural pathway from the MC4R-expressing neurons to the forebrain region called the lateral septum, which regulates emotions.
“We showed that this pathway regulates body weight and stress-related behaviors and that the neurons in the LS that receive input from hypothalamic MC4R neurons also regulate body weight,” Tong said. “These results bridge the brain feeding center and emotion center, providing a neural basis underlying association between feeding abnormality/obesity and emotion disorders.”
The results gathered by the Tong lab suggest that emotion neurons in the brain also play a role in regulating body weight, meaning that body weight and emotional states are co-regulated on the same neural pathway.
“Feeding abnormality is normally comorbid with changes in anxiety, and our results may provide a neural basis on this,” Tong said.
Moving forward, the lab will begin to identify the chemical identity of lateral septum neurons that receive inputs from hypothalamic MC4R neurons to target this subset of neurons.