A pioneering experiment has allowed us to observe for the first time how the brain works Tirzepatidethe active ingredient in the slimming drug Mongaro. Researchers at Penn Medicine directly measured the activity of the nucleus accumbens, the reward center of the brain, in a woman with severe obesity and binge eating behaviors. The study published in Natural medicinereveals that The drug is able to temporarily suppress the activity of nerve cells associated with cravings.
The participant, a 60-year-old woman, who had exhausted all clinical alternatives, agreed to the intervention using electrodes implanted in her brain. And that was the goal Monitor “food noise” in real time: Delta-theta signals released in the nucleus accumbens before bouts of uncontrolled eating. When he began receiving increasing doses of the diabetes drug tirzepatide, the researchers noticed a surprising result.
When he reached the full dose of the medicine, The electrodes detected unusual silence. Brain signals associated with food cravings disappeared, and the woman almost completely reduced episodes of severe anxiety about food. The authors describe this effect as a direct modulation of the reward circuitry, something that has never before been reported in humans with such precision.
However, the effect had an expiration date. From the fifth month of treatment, delta-theta activity returns, along with cravings and compulsive thoughts. Between the fifth and seventh months, the patient again experienced up to seven monthly attacks, despite maintaining the maximum dose of 15 mg per week. For researchers, this suggests that the brain is adapting The “silence” caused by tirzepatide is not permanent.
This work is part of a broader investigation with three participants who had brain monitoring devices implanted. In two of them, deep brain stimulation successfully reduced cravings,Validation of the delta-theta pattern as a biomarker. The third case, treated with tirzepatide, provides this unprecedented measurement of a drug effect on the human nucleus accumbens.
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