Brain Cells that Control When We Feel Hungry

As humans, we can use words like "hungry" and "full" to communicate when we need to eat throughout the day. However, mice, which are commonly used to study feeding behaviors in the laboratory, cannot tell us what they are feeling. We trained mice to tell us whether they were hungry or full. Then, we turned on and turned off certain cells in a brain region called the hypothalamus to see if these specific cell types could make a mouse feel hungry or full. Our research showed that turning on specific brain cells in a region called the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus caused mice to report they were hungry, even if they had just eaten and their stomachs should feel full. These results give us clues about how the brain works to control hunger.