{"id":5173,"date":"2015-07-10T10:15:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T10:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=5173"},"modified":"2015-07-10T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T10:15:08","slug":"how-insulin-calms-brain-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/how-insulin-calms-brain-activity\/","title":{"rendered":"How Insulin Calms Brain Activity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-5174\" src=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain-300x250.jpg\" alt=\"ddd1507_brain\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain-300x250.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Insulin has long been known as the hormone which controls the body\u2019s sugar levels: humans who lack or are insensitive to insulin develop diabetes. Although insulin is also made and released in the brain, its effects there have remained unclear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Now, researchers at McGill University have discovered a new role for this metabolic hormone. \u201cWe discovered that insulin controls the activity of the brain\u2019s \u2018brakes\u2019, which are called inhibitory GABA-A receptors, said Dr. Derek Bowie, a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine\u2019s Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. \u00a0\u201cInsulin prevents the brain from getting overexcited by calling upon a subtype of GABA-A receptors&#8211;a discovery which may lead to new treatments for epilepsy and other central nervous system conditions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\">An alternative to psychoactive drugs?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cGABA-A receptors are targeted by many psychoactive drugs such as benzodiazepines (e.g. valium) which are used to treat anxiety, induce anesthesia in surgery and relieve chronic pain,\u201d said Bowie who is also the Scientific Director of the FRQS-funded research group, G\u00c9PROM. \u201cAlthough beneficial, these drugs often have unwanted side-effects. We found that regulating the brain&#8217;s own chemistry using insulin brings about the same beneficial effect of these drugs, suggesting new routes for drug therapies that may have fewer side-effects.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Source:\u00a0<span style=\"color: #999999;\"><a style=\"color: #bf3b41;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mcgill.ca\/newsroom\/channels\/news\/how-insulin-calms-brain-activity-253761?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #999999;\">McGill University<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Insulin has long been known as the hormone which controls the body\u2019s sugar levels: humans who lack or are insensitive to insulin develop diabetes. Although insulin is also made and released in the brain, its effects there have remained unclear. Now, researchers at McGill University have discovered a new role for this metabolic hormone. \u201cWe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medicine","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain-300x250.jpg",300,250,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",431,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",78,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",500,418,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",96,80,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ddd1507_brain.jpg",150,125,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/health\/medicine\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Medicine<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/research\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}