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Pain, nausea and fever are usually avoided. But just put a single "switch" in the brain to perceive it as pleasant. This is true at least in the mouse, as a new study shows.
If the mechanism exists in humans is still unclear, according to a group led by David Engblom of the Linköping University in Sweden. The recently published study also involved the Austrian psychologist Michael Fritz, who also works at Linköping and who is currently a visiting professor at Stanford University in the United States.
Researchers have mice genetically engineered to produce a specific protein (the MC4R receptor) is no longer forming. Animals without MC4R behaved differently than their normal counterparts: while the latter avoided a room where researchers were administering unpleasant things – such as substances that cause fever, nausea, or an agonizing mood – GM mice were there even found more often than in another room where nothing happened to them
AP
More Happiness Hormones
The same thing happened again. is produced after the nasal administration of an MC4R blocking agent. These mice did not even care about the pain when they walked on a hot floor. The researchers found that pain, nausea, and fever in these animals did not result in a decrease in the amount of happy-hormone dopamine, as in normal mice, but even more so in a particular brain region ( nucleus arcuatus ) was. "This allows animals to perceive things like nausea, infections or internal stress as positive," says Fritz.
"The brain has developed a neural connection in which the positive and negative perception are treated under the control of a single type of receptor, said the native Tyrolean.It may have been important in the evolution to rapidly change the perception of certain environmental stimuli when necessary
The finding is also of clinical relevance In patients with chronic inflammatory diseases, the suffering caused by the discomfort is very great, resulting in a loss of motivation and increases the risk that depression is a side effect.You may be able to remedy this in the future with a simple nasal spray containing MC4R blockers.
science.ORF.at/APA
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