A role for the brainstem in regulating body weight
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The control of food intake requires neural and hormonal signals between the gut and the central nervous system, forming a 'gut-brain' axis. Cholecystokinin (CCK) is a gut hormone that signals via vagal afferents to the brain to terminate a meal. Previous studies from our lab have demonstrated that central signalling by the neuropeptide, prolactin-releasing peptide (PrRP), is required for CCK-induced satiety. PrRP is expressed in two brain areas involved in body-weight regulation: the hypothalamus and brainstem. Using the Cre-LoxP system in transgenic mice, we dissected separate populations of hypothalamic and brainstem PrRP neurons to assess their roles in mediating the effects of CCK. LSL-PrRP mice, with a loxSTOPlox codon between the PrRP promoter and coding sequence, do not express PrRP, are obese and do not respond to CCK. However, Cre-mediated rescue of brainstem PrRP expression prevents obesity and restores the anorectic feeding response to CCK. Together, these results demonstrate that PrRP expression in the brainstem, not the hypothalamus, is sufficient to mediate the effects of CCK and affect overall body weight. Thus, the CCK-PrRP pathway is a major component of the gut-brain axis and is a potential target in the development of novel treatments for obesity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".