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NEUROSCIENCE How obesity may harm memory and learning In obese mice, rogue immune cells chomp nerve cell connections肥胖如何损害记忆和学习 在肥胖小鼠中，失控的免疫细胞吞噬神经细胞连接 BY LAURA SANDERS 1:06PM, SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 SHARE ARTICLE CHOMP Obesity may prod immune cells to nibble parts of nerve cell connections called synapses, a mouse study suggests. 一项小鼠研究表明，CHOMP肥胖症可能会刺激免疫细胞吞噬被称为突触的部分神经细胞连接。 WHITEHOUNE/SHUTTERSTOCK SPONSOR MESSAGE Obesity can affect brainpower, and a study in mice may help explain how. In the brains of obese mice, rogue immune cells chomp nerve cell connections that are important for learning and memory, 在肥胖老鼠的大脑中，失控的免疫细胞吞噬对学习和记忆很重要的神经细胞连接scientists report September 10 in the Journal of Neuroscience. Drugs that stop this synapse destruction may ultimately prove useful for protecting the brain against the immune cell assault.阻止这种突触破坏的药物最终可能被证明对保护大脑免受免疫细胞攻击有用。 Like people, mice that eat lots of fat quickly pack on pounds. After 12 weeks of a high-fat diet, mice weighed almost 40 percent more than mice fed standard chow. These obese mice showed signs of diminished brainpower, neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould of Princeton University and colleagues found. Obese mice were worse at escaping mazes and remembering an object’s location than mice of a normal weight. On nerve cells, microscopic knobs called dendritic spines receive signals在神经细胞, 被称为树突棘的微观旋钮接收信号. Compared with normal-sized mice, obese mice had fewer dendritic spines in several parts of the mice’s hippocampi, brain structures important for learning and memory.与正常大小的老鼠相比，肥胖的老鼠海马的几个部分的树突棘更少，这一大脑结构对学习和记忆很重要。 The dendritic spine destruction comes from immune cells called microglia, the results suggest. 结果表明，树突棘的破坏来自一种叫做小胶质细胞的免疫细胞。In obese mice, higher numbers of active microglia lurked among these sparser nerve cell connections compared with mice of normal weights.在肥胖的小鼠中，与正常体重的小鼠相比，这些稀疏的神经细胞连接中潜伏着更多活跃的小胶质细胞 When the researchers interfered with microglia in obese mice, dendritic spines were protected and the mice’s performance on thinking tests improved.当研究人员干预肥胖小鼠的小胶质细胞时，树突棘得到了保护，小鼠在思维测试中的表现也得到了改善 Figuring out ways to stop microglia’s damage might one day prove to protect against obesity-related brain trouble, a concern relevant to the estimated 650 million obese adults worldwide.研究出阻止小胶质细胞损伤的方法，也许有一天会被证明可以预防与肥胖有关的大脑问题，这一问题与全世界估计有6.5亿肥胖成年人有关。 Obese people are also at a higher risk of dementias such as Alzheimer’s, and some researchers suspect microglia may be a culprit in those brain diseases more generally.肥胖的人患痴呆症的风险也更高，比如阿尔茨海默氏症，一些研究人员怀疑小胶质细胞可能是这些脑部疾病的罪魁祸首。 Missing signals A nerve cell from part of a mouse’s hippocampus, a brain structure important for learning and memory, has small message-receiving bumps called dendritic spines.老鼠海马状突起是一种大脑结构，对学习和记忆起着重要作用，它有称为树突棘的接收信息的小突起 A normal-weight mouse had more dendritic spines (arrows, top) than an obese mouse (bottom). E.C. COPE ET AL/JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE 2018 Citations E.C. Cope et al. Microglia play an active role in obesity-related cognitive decline. Journal of Neuroscience. Published online September 10, 2018. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0789-18.2018.
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