From conditioned hypoglycemia to obesity: following the data.
While a graduate student in the late 1960s I trained rats to lower their blood glucose in response to an arbitrary cue, a phenomenon called conditioned hypoglycemia. Over many years as my colleagues and I attempted to understand the underlying physiology of conditioned insulin secretion and conditioned hypoglycemia, it became clear that there were many implications that were highly important, including the entry of insulin into the brain, the existence of insulin receptors in certain brain areas, neural reflexes that project to insulin-secreting B-cells in the pancreas, the entrainment of those reflexes to improve the efficiency of meal-taking, and the possibility of adiposity signals from the body to the brain that influence behavior and metabolism. This article summarizes how we tackled each of these areas of research.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati, 2170 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45237, USA. Electronic address: steve.woods@uc.edu.
Stephen C
SC
Woods
D000818:Animals; D001325:Autobiographies as Topic; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D007003:Hypoglycemia; D007328:Insulin / Q000378:metabolism*; D009765:Obesity
D001786:Blood Glucose; D007328:Insulin
Cerebrospinal fluid; Glucose; Insulin; Insulin receptors