Obesity is a chronic, relapsing condition characterized by excess body fat. Its prevalence
has increased globally since the 1970s, and the number of obese and overweight people is …

Opioids mediate their effects via opioid receptors: mu, delta, and kappa. At the neuronal
level, opioid receptors are generally inhibitory, presynaptically reducing neurotransmitter …

The mesocorticolimbic pathway is canonically known as the" reward pathway." Embedded
within the center of this circuit is the striatum, a massive and complex network hub that …

Drug addiction is a worldwide societal problem and public health burden, and results from
recreational drug use that develops into a complex brain disorder. The opioid system, one of …

Itch is one of the most primal sensations, being both ubiquitous and important for the well-
being of animals. For more than a century, a desire to understand how itch is encoded by the …

Preclinical applications of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) offer
the possibility to non-invasively probe whole-brain network dynamics and to investigate the …

The dopamine (DA) hypothesis posits the increase of mesolimbic dopamine levels as a
defining commonality of addictive drugs, initially causing reinforcement, eventually leading …

The entire world has been affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 since early 2020. Human
carriers are largely the spreaders of this new disease, and it spreads much faster compared …

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) regulates blood pressure by cleaving angiotensin I to
produce angiotensin II. In the brain, ACE is especially abundant in striatal tissue, but the …

A major challenge in medicine is developing potent pain therapies without the adverse
effects of opiates. Neuroinflammation and in particular microglial activation have been …