Hypothalamic neuronal circuits regulating hunger-induced taste modification

Ou Fu, Yuu Iwai, Masataka Narukawa, Ayako W. Ishikawa, Kentaro K. Ishii, Ken Murata, Yumiko Yoshimura, Kazushige Touhara, Takumi Misaka, Yasuhiko Minokoshi and Ken-ichiro Nakajima ()
Additional contact information
Ou Fu: The University of Tokyo
Yuu Iwai: The University of Tokyo
Masataka Narukawa: The University of Tokyo
Ayako W. Ishikawa: National Institutes of Natural Sciences
Kentaro K. Ishii: The University of Tokyo
Ken Murata: The University of Tokyo
Yumiko Yoshimura: National Institutes of Natural Sciences
Kazushige Touhara: The University of Tokyo
Takumi Misaka: The University of Tokyo
Yasuhiko Minokoshi: National Institutes of Natural Sciences
Ken-ichiro Nakajima: The University of Tokyo

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract The gustatory system plays a critical role in sensing appetitive and aversive taste stimuli for evaluating food quality. Although taste preference is known to change depending on internal states such as hunger, a mechanistic insight remains unclear. Here, we examine the neuronal mechanisms regulating hunger-induced taste modification. Starved mice exhibit an increased preference for sweetness and tolerance for aversive taste. This hunger-induced taste modification is recapitulated by selective activation of orexigenic Agouti-related peptide (AgRP)-expressing neurons in the hypothalamus projecting to the lateral hypothalamus, but not to other regions. Glutamatergic, but not GABAergic, neurons in the lateral hypothalamus function as downstream neurons of AgRP neurons. Importantly, these neurons play a key role in modulating preferences for both appetitive and aversive tastes by using distinct pathways projecting to the lateral septum or the lateral habenula, respectively. Our results suggest that these hypothalamic circuits would be important for optimizing feeding behavior under fasting.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12478-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12478-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12478-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().