| 研究実績の概要 |
It is not well understood what role sleep loss plays in affecting areas of the brain that control the desire to consume unhealthy foods. Our work finds that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep loss leads to increased consumption of unhealthy foods, specifically sucrose and fat. We 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, we discovered that inhibiting these neurons reversed the effect of REM sleep loss on sucrose consumption while having no effect on fat consumption (McEown K, et al. eLife, 5:e20269, 2016). Our work is the first attempt to establish an animal model on this subject.
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