The brain, and particularly the hypothalamus, plays a key role in integrating physiologic and environmental cues to regulate blood glucose levels. However, the specific neural circuits that regulate glucose homeostasis in response to stress and in diabetes are closely intertwined with neural circuits that mediate fear- and anxiety-like behaviors, making it difficult to identify specific neural targets for diabetes treatment. Using newly generated mouse models and molecular neuroscience tools we will disentangle the neural circuits responsible for glucose metabolism from those that drive behavioral responses, with a long-term goal of developing brain-targeted treatment for metabolic disease.
