Liberles lab reveals how hunger promotes food odor attraction

Fed/Fasted

Internal states such as hunger control sensory cue attention through poorly understood mechanisms. In a recent study published in Nature, the Liberles lab identified a neuronal mechanism in mice by which hunger selectively promotes attraction to food odors over other olfactory cues. Hunger promotes food odor attraction by triggering a neural circuit from hypothalamic AGRP neurons to the paraventricular thalamus, and this neural circuit action requires neuropeptide Y and its receptor NPY5R.