AsianScientist (Dec. 14, 2016) – Losing sleep could cause you to crave unhealthy food and gain weight. These findings, from a study in mice, have been published in eLife.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a unique phase of sleep in mammals that is closely associated with dreaming and characterized by random eye movement and almost complete paralysis of the body. The role of sleep loss in affect areas of the brain that control the desire to consume unhealthy foods is not well understood.
On the other hand, the prefrontal cortex is known to play a role in judging the palatability of foods through taste, smell and texture. Moreover, persons who are obese tend to have increased activity in the prefrontal cortex when exposed to high calorie foods.
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba’s International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (IIIS) used a new method to produce REM sleep loss in mice along with a chemical-genetic technique to block prefrontal cortex neurons and the behaviors they mediate. As a result, they discovered that inhibiting these neurons reversed the effect of REM sleep loss on sucrose consumption while having no effect on fat consumption.
“Our results suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex may play a direct role in controlling our desire to consume weight promoting foods, high in sucrose content, when we are lacking sleep,” said Assistant Professor Kristopher McEown, the lead author on this project.
The article can be found at: McEown et al. (2016) Chemogenetic Inhibition of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex Reverses the Effects of REM Sleep Loss on Sucrose Consumption.
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Source: University of Tsukuba; Photo: Shutterstock.
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