Potential neonatal toxicity of new psychoactive substances.

Cannabis, cocaine, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, and lysergic acid diethylamide are psychoactive substances with a significant increase in consumption during the 21st century due to their popularity in medicinal and recreational use. New psychoactive substances (NPSs) mimic established psychoactive substances. NPSs are known as being natural and safe to consumers; however, they are neither natural nor safe, causing severe adverse reactions, including seizures, nephrotoxicity, and sometimes death.

Scale-free behavioral dynamics directly linked with scale-free cortical dynamics.

Naturally occurring body movements and collective neural activity both exhibit complex dynamics, often with scale-free, fractal spatiotemporal structure. Scale-free dynamics of both brain and behavior are important because each is associated with functional benefits to the organism. Despite their similarities, scale-free brain activity and scale-free behavior have been studied separately, without a unified explanation.

Brain responses to glucose ingestion are greater in children than adults and are associated with overweight and obesity.

Objective: This study investigated whether brain regions involved in the regulation of food intake respond differently to glucose ingestion in children and adults and the relationship between brain responses and weight status.

Methods: Data included 87 children (ages 7-11 years) and 94 adults (ages 18-35 years) from two cohorts. Healthy weight, overweight, and obesity were defined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria.

Obesity and Dietary Added Sugar Interact to Affect Postprandial GLP-1 and Its Relationship to Striatal Responses to Food Cues and Feeding Behavior.

It has been hypothesized that the incretin hormone, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), decreases overeating by influencing mesolimbic brain regions that process food-cues, including the dorsal striatum. We previously showed that habitual added sugar intake was associated with lower glucose-induced circulating GLP-1 and a greater striatal response to high calorie food cues in lean individuals. Less is known about how dietary added sugar and obesity may interact to affect postprandial GLP-1 and its relationship to striatal responses to food cues and feeding behavior.

Evidence of a Role for the Hippocampus in Food-Cue Processing and the Association with Body Weight and Dietary Added Sugar.

Objective: The current analysis used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore a model of energy regulation postulating that the hippocampus integrates interoceptive signals and environmental stimuli to suppress responding to food cues. It was hypothesized that hippocampal activity would increase in response to food cues under postnutritive relative to fasted conditions, given the role of the hippocampus in integrating postnutritive signals with food cues, and that obesity, added sugar intake, or a combination of these factors would alter this response.

Methods: Data were analyzed on 65 participants (29 males).

Appetite-Regulating Hormones Are Reduced After Oral Sucrose vs Glucose: Influence of Obesity, Insulin Resistance, and Sex.

Context: Fructose compared to glucose has adverse effects on metabolic function, but endocrine responses to oral sucrose vs glucose is not well understood.

Objective: We investigated how oral sucrose vs glucose affected appetite-regulating hormones, and how biological factors (body mass index [BMI], insulin sensitivity, sex) influence endocrine responses to these 2 types of sugar.

Design: Sixty-nine adults (29 men; 23.

Impacts of Acute Sucralose and Glucose on Brain Activity during Food Decisions in Humans.

It is not known how acute sucralose and glucose alter signaling within the brain when individuals make decisions about available food. Here we examine this using Food Bid Task in which participants bid on visually depicted food items, while simultaneously undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Twenty-eight participants completed three sessions after overnight fast, distinguished only by the consumption at the start of the session of 300 mL cherry flavored water with either 75 g glucose, 0.

Reframing appetitive reinforcement learning and reward valuation as effects mediated by hippocampal-dependent behavioral inhibition.

Traditional theories of neuroeconomics focus on reinforcement learning and reward value. We propose here a novel reframing of reinforcement learning and motivation that includes a hippocampal-dependent regulatory mechanism which balances cue-induced behavioral excitation with behavioral inhibition. This mechanism enables interoceptive cues produced by respective food or drug satiety to antagonize the ability of excitatory food- and drug-related environmental cues to retrieve the memories of food and drug reinforcers, thereby suppressing the power of those cues to evoke appetitive behavior.

Dietary Fructose Intake and Hippocampal Structure and Connectivity during Childhood.

In rodent literature, there is evidence that excessive fructose consumption during development has a detrimental impact on hippocampal structure and function. In this study of 103 children ages 7-11 years old, we investigated whether dietary fructose intake was related to alterations in hippocampal volume and connectivity in humans. To examine if these associations were specific to fructose or were related to dietary sugars intake in general, we explored relationships between dietary intake of added sugars and the monosaccharide, glucose, on the same brain measures.

Identifying cytochrome P450s involved in oxidative metabolism of synthetic cannabinoid N-(adamantan-1-yl)-1-(5-fluoropentyl)-1H-indole-3-carboxamide (STS-135).

Synthetic cannabinoids (SCBs), designer drugs marketed as legal alternatives to marijuana, act as ligands to cannabinoid receptors; however, they have increased binding affinity and potency, resulting in toxicity symptoms such as cardiovascular incidents, seizures, and potentially death. N-(adamantan-1-yl)-1-(5-fluoropentyl)-1H-indole-3-carboxamide (STS-135) is a third generation SCB. When incubated with hepatocytes, it undergoes oxidation, hydrolysis, and glucuronidation, resulting in 29 metabolites, with monohydroxy STS-135 (M25) and dihydroxy STS-135 (M21) being the predominant metabolites.

The Cognitive Control of Eating and Body Weight: It's More Than What You "Think".

Over the past decade, a great deal of research has established the importance of cognitive processes in the control of energy intake and body weight. The present paper begins by identifying several of these cognitive processes. We then summarize evidence from human and nonhuman animal models, which shows how excess intake of obesity-promoting Western diet (WD) may have deleterious effects on these cognitive control processes.

Enzymatic analysis of glucuronidation of synthetic cannabinoid 1-naphthyl 1-(4-fluorobenzyl)-1H-indole-3-carboxylate (FDU-PB-22).

Recently, there has been a rise in abuse of synthetic cannabinoids (SCBs). The consumption of SCBs results in various effects and can induce toxic reactions, including paranoia, seizures, tachycardia and even death. 1-Naphthyl 1-(4-fluorobenzyl)-1H-indole-3-carboxylate (FDU-PB-22) is a third generation SCB whose metabolic pathway has not been fully characterized.

The effects of a GLP-1 analog liraglutide on reward value and the learned inhibition of appetitive behavior in male and female rats.

Liraglutide, a relatively long-lasting analog of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), has received recent attention as a treatment for obesity. It has been proposed that activation of GLP-1 receptors in mesolimbic reward pathways contributes to this outcome by reducing hedonic value of food. However, other findings suggest that activation of GLP-1 signaling pathways may suppress appetitive behavior by enhancing a hippocampal-dependent form of learned inhibition.

Cocaine impairs serial-feature negative learning and blood-brain barrier integrity.

Previous research has shown that diets high in fat and sugar [a.k.a.

Associative mechanisms underlying the function of satiety cues in the control of energy intake and appetitive behavior.

While previous research has identified a number of metabolic, neural, and hormonal events that could serve as potential satiety signals, the mechanisms that enable satiety signals to suppress food-seeking and eating behavior remain poorly specified. Here we investigate the idea that the inhibitory power of satiety signals is derived, at least in part, from their ability to signal that foods and food-related stimuli will not be followed by reinforcing postingestive consequences. Viewed in this way, the signaling relationship in which satiety cues are embedded defines what is known in Pavlovian conditioning as a "serial feature negative" (sFN) discrimination problem.

Discriminative control by deprivation states and external cues in male and female rats.

Previous research indicates that decisions about when to eat in response to food cues in the environment are based on interoceptive energy states (i.e., hunger and fullness) and learning about and remembering prior eating experiences.

Tbet and IL-36γ cooperate in therapeutic DC-mediated promotion of ectopic lymphoid organogenesis in the tumor microenvironment.

We have previously reported that direct injection of dendritic cells (DC) engineered to express the Type-1 transactivator Tbet (i.e., DC.

Western diet and the weakening of the interoceptive stimulus control of appetitive behavior.

In obesogenic environments food-related external cues are thought to overwhelm internal cues that normally regulate energy intake. We investigated how this shift from external to internal stimulus control might occur. Experiment 1 showed that rats could use stimuli arising from 0 and 4h food deprivation to predict sucrose delivery.

The Outward Spiral: A vicious cycle model of obesity and cognitive dysfunction.

Chronic failure to suppress intake during states of positive energy balance leads to weight gain and obesity. The ability to use context - including interoceptive satiety states - to inhibit responding to previously rewarded cues appears to depend on the functional integrity of the hippocampus. Recent evidence implicates energy dense Western diets in several types of hippocampal dysfunction, including reduced expression of neurotrophins and nutrient transporters, increased inflammation, microglial activation, and blood brain barrier permeability.

Western-style diet impairs stimulus control by food deprivation state cues: Implications for obesogenic environments.

In western and westernized societies, large portions of the population live in what are considered to be "obesogenic" environments. Among other things, obesogenic environments are characterized by a high prevalence of external cues that are associated with highly palatable, energy-dense foods. One prominent hypothesis suggests that these external cues become such powerful conditioned elicitors of appetitive and eating behavior that they overwhelm the internal, physiological mechanisms that serve to maintain energy balance.

Characteristics of intracellular Ca2+ cycling in intact rat heart: a comparison of sex differences.

Males and females show distinct differences in action potential waveform, ion channel expression patterns, and ECG characteristics. However, it is not known how sex-based differences in Ca2+ cycling might contribute to these differences in electrophysiological activity. The goal of this study was to investigate the differences in cellular Ca2+ transients in males and females and to examine how these might contribute to electrophysiological function.