Scientists find how too much food hurts the brain

Scientists in Japan have found how food with too many calories^*1 can make the brain work less well. The study comes from the Institute of Science Tokyo, a university in Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Scientists at Teikyo University, another university in Japan, also worked on it. The university announced the results on September 17. The paper was published in the science journal^*2 Molecular Psychiatry on September 12.

The scientists studied mice. They gave the mice food with a lot of calories. In the brains of these mice, the amount of a protein^*3 called PQBP1^*4 went down. After that, the molecules^*5 that make up the synapses^*6 in the brain stopped working in the normal way. Then the circuits^*7 of brain cells worked less well. This is the first time in the world that scientists have shown this chain of events.

The scientists also found why PQBP1 goes down. When a mouse eats too many calories, its body sends a signal with insulin^*8. This signal stops a second protein, called PPARγ^*9, from doing its job. When PPARγ cannot work, the amount of PQBP1 falls.

Then the scientists tried two ways to fix the problem. First, they gave the mice a medicine for diabetes^*10. Doctors already use this medicine, and it helps PPARγ work better. Second, they used gene therapy^*11 that worked on PQBP1. Both ways helped. The damage to the synapses got better, and the brains of the mice worked better again.

Scientists already knew that PQBP1 is linked to intellectual disability^*12 and Alzheimer's disease^*13. The new study shows that the same protein also plays a part in the brain problems that come from eating too much. The scientists say their results may open the way to new treatments.

1. *1 calories: units that measure how much energy is in food
2. *2 journal: a magazine where scientists publish their studies
3. *3 protein: a very small building block that the body uses to make and run its cells
4. *4 PQBP1: the name of one protein found in brain cells
5. *5 molecules: very tiny pieces that all things are made of
6. *6 synapses: the places where one brain cell sends signals to another brain cell
7. *7 circuits: groups of brain cells that are connected and work together
8. *8 insulin: a substance the body makes to control sugar in the blood
9. *9 PPARγ: the name of another protein in the body
10. *10 diabetes: an illness in which the body cannot control sugar in the blood
11. *11 gene therapy: a treatment that changes or fixes genes, the instructions inside cells
12. *12 intellectual disability: a condition in which a person finds learning and understanding much harder than most people
13. *13 Alzheimer's disease: an illness of the brain that slowly takes away memory and thinking