Obesity: Are lipids hard drugs for the brain?

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Why can we get up for a piece of chocolate, but never because we fancy a carrot? Serge Luquet’s team at the “Biologie Fonctionnelle et Adaptative” laboratory (CNRS/Universit Paris Diderot) has demonstrated part of the answer: triglycerides, fatty substances from food, may act in our brains directly on the reward circuit, the same circuit that is involved in drug addiction. These results, published on April 15, 2014 in Molecular Psychiatry, show a strong link in mice between fluctuations in triglyceride concentration and brain reward development. Identifying the action of nutritional lipids on motivation and the search for pleasure in dietary intake will help us better understand the causes of some compulsive behaviors and obesity.Though the act of eating responds to a biological need, it is also an essential cultural and social function in our modern societies. Meals are generally associated with a strong notion of pleasure, a feeling that pushes us towards food. Sometimes this is dangerous: 2.8 million people worldwide die from the consequences of obesity each year. Fundamentally, obesity is caused by imbalance between calories consumed and expended. A sedentary life combined with an abundance of sugary, fatty foods provides fertile ground for this disease.The body uses sugars and fats as energy sources. The brain only consumes glucose. So why do we find an enzyme that can decompose triglycerides, lipids that come in particular from food, at its core, at the heart of the reward mechanism? …


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