WIKIMEDIA, CRAIG HACKING AND A. PROF FRANK GAILLARDElectrical stimulation of the brain’s ventral striatum increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin, apparently by boosting dopamine levels, researchers reported yesterday (May 23) in Science Translational Medicine.
As Science reports, the finding began serendipitously, when a Dutch man being treated for obsessive-compulsive disorder with deep brain stimulation (DBS) found that his diabetes symptoms also improved. A team of researchers, most of them based at the Academic Medical Center in the Netherlands, recruited him and 14 other patients already using DBS in the same brain region via surgically implanted electrodes. The investigators discovered that the participants’ insulin sensitivity was higher when their brain-zapping devices had been on for 17 hours than when they had been off for the same period of time.
Previous studies had hinted that dopamine levels in the ventral striatum play a role in insulin sensitivity, and that DBS increases those levels. To find out whether the dopamine changes might ...
