Watching others eat tasty meals might result in overeating, even within the absence of starvation, in accordance with a brand new mouse research being offered Monday at ENDO 2025, the Endocrine Society’s annual assembly in San Francisco, Calif.
This animal mannequin opens the door to creating new remedies that concentrate on the mind’s reward system to assist forestall or scale back overeating. It additionally helps public well being efforts that goal to restrict the affect of visible meals cues in media and social settings, which might assist folks higher handle their weight and consuming habits.”
Yong Xu, Ph.D., M.D., professor and affiliate director for Primary Sciences, Youngsters’s Vitamin Analysis Middle (CNRC), Baylor School of Drugs, Houston, Texas
The research was carried out by Xu Xu, M.D., pediatric endocrine fellow at Texas Youngsters’s Hospital, and Hesong Liu, Ph.D., earlier postdoctoral fellow at CNRC and at present assistant professor of Neuroscience and Physiology at Upstate Medical College in Syracuse, in Yong Xu’s lab.
In the research, 14 mice had been divided into two teams: group A mice had been both fed or fasted in a single day earlier than testing, whereas group B mice had been all the time fed earlier than testing. The mice had been paired primarily based on genetic and parental info and positioned in separate however close by areas to look at one another with out bodily contact. The researchers measured the quantity of meals the mice ate hourly for 4 hours throughout totally different take a look at days, utilizing chow, high-fat, and sucrose diets.
In a follow-up experiment, group B mice obtained injections of both 0.1 ml of 9% saline, a D1 dopamine receptor (DRD1) inhibitor (SCH23390, 0.1 mg/kg), or a D2 dopamine receptor (DRD2) inhibitor (Eticlopride, 1 mg/kg) quarter-hour earlier than testing, and meals consumption was measured.
Apparently, satiated mice that watched fasted friends eat didn’t eat extra chow or high-fat meals. Nevertheless, they considerably elevated their consumption of the sucrose weight-reduction plan in the course of the first hour of observation-both within the preliminary and repeated experiments. This overeating persevered after saline injections however was suppressed by dopamine receptor inhibitors.
“This research exhibits, in animals, that merely watching one other eat-especially palatable food-can trigger overeating, even when not hungry,” Xu stated. “It additionally identifies a selected mind system (dopamine signaling) that helps clarify why this occurs. This sort of conduct, pushed by environmental and social cues, may be very related in in the present day’s world, the place meals is plentiful and consuming exhibits or food-related social media are frequent.”
The researchers counsel that recognizing this sample might assist folks change into extra aware of overeating, a significant factor in weight problems, and open the door for brand spanking new remedies.
