(July 23, 2015) The
brain’s effect on other parts of the body has been well established. Now, a
group that includes two University of Florida Health researchers has found that
it’s a two-way street: Body fat can send a signal that affects the way the
brain deals with stress and metabolism.
While the exact nature of those signals remains a mystery,
researchers say simply knowing such a pathway exists and learning more about it
could help break a vicious cycle: Stress causes a desire to eat more, which can
lead to obesity. And too much extra fat can impair the body’s ability to send a
signal to the brain to shut off the stress response.
The findings are important and unique because they show that
it’s not simply the brain that drives the way the body responds to stress, said
James Herman, Ph.D., a co-author of the paper and a professor in the department
of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati,.
“It moved our understanding of stress control to include
other parts of the body. Before this, everyone thought that the regulation of
stress was mainly due to the brain. It’s not just in the brain. This study
suggests that stress regulation occurs on a much larger scale, including body
systems controlling metabolism, such as fat,” Herman said.
The findings, which reveal a novel fat-to-brain feedback
network, were published in the June edition of the journal
Psychoneuroendocrinology by a group that included Annette D. de Kloet, Ph.D., a
research assistant professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of
physiology and functional genomics, and Eric Krause, Ph.D., an assistant
professor in the UF College of Pharmacy’s department of pharmacodynamics.