Obesity is a worldwide problem, with the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating that 650 million people across the globe were obese in 2016.

Many experts point the finger at overeating and a sedentary lifestyle as the root causes of the obesity epidemic.

However, any action that we take has consequences at the molecular level, and experts know little detail about how our brains behave as the readings on the scales slowly go up.

Scientists from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, along with collaborators in the United States, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, sought to unravel the molecular pathways at play in the brains of mice with obesity.

Garrett Stuber, a professor of neurobiology who has now moved to the Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction, Pain, and Emotion at the University of Washington in Seattle, is the senior author of the team's results, which feature in the journal Science.

http://www.gzjiayumed.com/en/index.asp