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Hunger is a gatekeeper of pain in the brain

A neuronal population has now been found that regulates two competing needs — hunger and pain. Urgent pain overrides hunger, but appetite-inducing neuronal activity dampens long-term pain responses to enable feeding.
  1. Alexey Ponomarenko

    1. lexey Ponomarenko is at the Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany.

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  2. Tatiana Korotkova

    1. Tatiana Korotkova is at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne 50931, Germany.

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The body’s basic needs include a timely supply of nutrients and the avoidance of tissue damage, which are signalled in the brain by hunger and pain, respectively. But these needs cannot be fulfilled simultaneously, because their resolution involves mutually exclusive behaviours. How does the brain prioritize the more urgent need? Writing in Cell, Alhadeff et al.1 report that the brain’s priorities are set depending on the type of pain involved. Hunger-mediating neurons suppress long-term inflammatory pain, but acute pain, which signals an immediate threat, dampens the activity of these neurons and thus deprioritizes feeding.

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Nature 556, 445-446 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04759-0

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