In a study, researchers at Virginia Tech University found that early childhood stress alters the brain and raises the likelihood of obsessive overeating in adulthood. The study, led by Sora Shin, assistant professor at The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, Virginia explained how early life trauma might change a brain pathway that ordinarily provides urges to cease eating.
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What is binge eating?
According to the verywellmind, ” when someone binges, they consume a lot of food quickly, even when they are not hungry, even to the point of discomfort”. Estimated Over eight out of ten Americans have experienced childhood abuse, neglect, or other trauma, and around 3% of Americans have an eating disorder at some point in their lives.
What happened in the study?
The research, which was based on mice research and offers fresh insight into conditions like obesity and obsessive eating. To establish a connection between the illness and early childhood trauma, Shin and her lab colleagues looked into the function of the hormone leptin in the brain. Long recognized for telling the brain to stop eating, leptin inhibits hunger and weight growth.
The researchers discovered that Leptin is less effective in the lateral hypothalamus, a region of the brain that controls several actions, in mice who suffered early life stress and showed overeating behavior. In the lack of these brain signals, overeating prevailed.
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Further research showed neurons in the ventrolateral periaqueductal grey, another region of the brain, which reacts to signals from the lateral hypothalamus and leptin and hence regulates binge eating.
Future significance
This research offers considerable hope for the development of obsessive disorder neuroscience while critically examining it. Mark S. Gold, a respected professor and former chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of Florida and professor in the department of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study, stated, “finding risk factors, triggers, and causes may be possible for specialists thanks to advanced imaging and brain circuitry.
By examining the impact of traumatic and early life experiences in this pathway, we may be able to enhance preventative and early intervention strategies to halt eating disorders.”
The research was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
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