Publications by authors named "Sarah M Fourman"
Eating palatable foods can provide stress relief, but the mechanisms by which this occurs are unclear. We previously characterized a limited sucrose intake (LSI) paradigm in which twice-daily access to a small amount of 30% sucrose (vs. water as a control) reduces hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis responses to stress and alters neuronal activation in stress-regulatory brain regions in male rats.
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- The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis is activated in response to threats, causing the body to mobilize energy for a stress response, which can be influenced by nutrition.
- A study showed that a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet (KD) in rats and mice linked to nutritional ketosis resulted in signs of chronic stress, such as increased stress hormones and other markers of HPA axis activity.
- The protein FGF21, associated with the ketotic state, appears to modulate this HPA response, as mice without FGF21 had a reduced HPA axis activity when subjected to the ketogenic diet or medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs).
A history of intermittent, limited sucrose intake (LSI) attenuates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis stress response, and neuronal activity in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is necessary for this HPA-dampening. LSI increases the expression of plasticity-associated genes in the BLA; however, the nature of this plasticity is unknown. As BLA principal neuron activity normally promotes HPA responses, the present study tests the hypothesis that LSI decreases stress-excitatory BLA output by decreasing glutamatergic and/or increasing GABAergic inputs to BLA principal neurons.
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