Brain and fat are well acquainted with each other. We know, for example, that fat cells secrete hormones that signal the brain when to stop eating. This exchange of messages can be rather slow, though, as it takes time for hormones to travel from fat into the bloodstream to the brain.
A study published August 31 in Nature, however, suggests that fat may be sending much faster messages to the brain. The work provides evidence that somatosensory cells—the ones that warn us if something is cold or painful—innervate the adipose tissue of mice, hinting that these neurons may sense something in the fat, potentially prompting a reaction as fast as jerking a hand away from a hot stovetop. But what that something might be, and its effects on the brain, remain unknown for now.
This is a “really nice paper,” says University of Oxford neuroscientist Ana Domingos, who was not ...
