Abstract In 2016 the World Health Organization reported 39% of the world's adult population
(over 18 y) was overweight, with western countries such as Australia and the United States …

The opioid system consists of three receptors, mu, delta, and kappa, which are activated by
endogenous opioid peptides processed from three protein precursors, proopiomelanocortin …

What are the neural substrates of food reward? Are reward and pleasure identical? Can
taste pleasure be assessed in animals? Is reward necessarily conscious? These questions …

The obesity epidemic has been widely publicized in the media worldwide. Investigators at all
levels have been looking for factors that have contributed to the development of this …

How are natural reward functions such as sucrose hedonic impact and the motivation to eat
generated within the ventral pallidum (VP)? Here, we used a novel microinjection and …

Microinjection of opioid agonists, such as morphine, into the nucleus accumbens shell
produces increases in eating behavior (ie 'wanting'for food). This study (1) reports direct …

Growing evidence suggests that oxytocin plays an important role in the regulation of energy
balance and that central oxytocin administration induces weight loss in diet-induced obese …

Hindbrain projections of oxytocin neurons in the parvocellular paraventricular nucleus
(pPVN) are hypothesized to transmit leptin signaling from the hypothalamus to the nucleus …

Endomorphin-1 (Tyr-Pro-Trp-Phe-NH2) and endomorphin-2 (Tyr-Pro-Phe-Phe-NH2) are two
endogenous opioid peptides with high affinity and remarkable selectivity for the μ-opioid …

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) often show normal to elevated physical activity levels
despite severe weight loss and emaciation. This is seemingly in contrast to the loss of …