Navigation
Hedonic eating and the “delicious circle”: From lipid-derived mediators to brain dopamine and back
This 2018 review examined the literature on “old” and “newly” discovered influencing factors of reward-inducing overeating and eating addiction, analysing for instance high-fat palatable foods and dietary lipids on endocannabinoid formation and their potential to derange the feeding homeostasis. Other topics discussed include endocannabinoid signaling as a key mechanism acting both at hypothalamic and mesolimbic circuits and affecting both dopamine function and interplay between leptin and ghrelin signaling. Coccurello & Maccarrone (2018) covered the lateral hypothalamus, and specifically the lateral hypothalamus-ventral tegmental area-nucleus accumbens neural circuitry, since the former is capable of responding to the food-associated homeostatic information transferred (e.g. with food salience, motivation to eat, reward-seeking, and development of compulsive eating), and in order to study the functional interplay between ghrelin, dopamine, orexin, and endocannabinoid signaling. The endocannabinoids were identified to be potentially crucial in food reward processing within the lateral hypothalamus, as were orexin neurons in the integration of endocrine signals with food reinforcement and hedonic eating. Furthermore, the role played by different stressors in the reinstatement of preference for palatable food and food-seeking behavior were considered in the light of endocannabinoid production, activation of orexin receptors and disinhibition of dopamine neurons. The authors also have linked the type-1 cannabinoid receptor-dependent inhibition of GABA-ergic release and relapse to reward-associated stimuli to ghrelin and orexin signaling in the lateral hypothalamus-ventral tegmental area-nucleus accumbens network to mark its pathological potential for food addiction-like habits. [NPID: brain, hippocampus, reward, eating addiction, addiction, high-fat, homeostasis, mesolimbic circuits, endocannabinoids, dopamine, ghrelin, hedonic eating, pleasure, GABA, Gaba, food addiction]
Year: 2018
