It turns out that obesity may have a bad influence on learning function and memory of the brain

by Tony Alter

Over the past few decades obese people are on an increasing trend globally, and in the 21st century more than 600 million people worldwide are said to be obese. Obesity is known to be associated with diseases such as heart disease and cancer in addition to stroke and type 2 diabetes , but "research results that obesity has an adverse effect on not only health but also the cognitive ability of the brain" It was announced.

Microglia play an active role in obesity-associated cognitive decline | Journal of Neuroscience
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2018/09/10/JNEUROSCI.0789-18.2018

Obesity Could Affect Learning and Memory, Research Finds
https://www.newsweek.com/obesity-affects-learning-memory-research-1114913

Elizabeth Gold et al., A professor of neuroscience at Princeton University , have reported that male mice who had been given a high fat diet and became overweight by 40% more than standard mice and a normal diet We gave experiments using two groups of male mice with standard weight given. In experiments, we gave the two groups of mice "escape from the maze" respectively, and measured the problem solving rate.

As a result, it became clear that the percentage of obesity group mice could escape from the maze was low. The research team believes that "obesity mice have difficulty in escaping from the maze because their ability to memorize the location of objects in the maze is decreasing."

When the research team examined the brain of a mouse, the mouse of the obesity of the nerve cell dendrites are flying out of, dendritic spines was found that the site has declined that. Dendritic spines are an important part involved in the transmission of excitatory synapses in the brain, but in the hippocampus related to learning and memory in obese mice, a decrease in dendritic spines was observed in many cases.

Researchers considered the possibility that microglia, which is a type of immune cell, is involved in the question "Why do dendritic spines decrease when becoming obese?" Microglia activates and repairs lesions when nerve tissue undergoes damage such as inflammation. However, microglia actively acts in the vicinity of nerve cells when becoming obese, and the research team thought that "this property is decreasing the number of dendritic spines".

Therefore, the research team inhibited the action of microglia in obese mice to verify that "cognitive function restores by inhibiting the action of microglia?" The dendritic spine was protected, and the cognitive function of the obese mouse improved.

It is thought that microglia is also involved in depression and it seems that there is a possibility that it can protect the brain from deterioration of cognitive function due to obesity and psychiatric disorders by suppressing excessive work by medicine and the like. It is not yet clear whether obesity is involved in the decline of cognitive function also in human beings, but future studies will lead to a relationship between human obesity and cognitive function and a way to improve cognitive function It is considered to be located.

by Marjan Lazarevski