Insulin, the hormone essential to all mammals for controlling blood sugar levels and a feeling of being full after eating, plays a much stronger role than previously known in regulating release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

Research conducted not only reaffirm that insulin helps trigger the reuptake of dopamine when insulin levels rise, but also are the first to show that the net effect is a rise in dopamine levels. The results may also be the first to demonstrate that insulin's role in the dopamine pathway may affect and explain food choices.

Researchers recorded a 20 percent to 55 percent increase in dopamine released in the striatal region of the rodent brain (where dopamine's effects on the brain are felt and which governs the body's response to getting a reward). The rise occurred along the same timeframe as the rise in insulin activity needed to process any food sugars the mice and rats ate. And this occurred despite the reabsorption, or reuptake, of dopamine that in other regions of the brain tells an animal that its appetite is satisfied.

Researchers conducted separate experiments with rats in which they found that animals fed low-calorie diets had a 10-fold greater sensitivity to increasing insulin levels in the brain (meaning that it took only a tenth of a rise in insulin levels as seen in rats on a normal diet to spur dopamine release). By contrast, rats on high-calorie diets lost all striatal-brain insulin responsiveness.

In addition, rats offered a choice between a drink reward that was paired with either an insulin antibody injection to block hormone signaling or a mock placebo injection always favored the drink-injection combination that led to intact insulin signaling (and more dopamine).

Researchers report that insulin can amplify action potential-dependent dopamine (DA) release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and caudate–putamen through an indirect mechanism that involves striatal cholinergic interneurons that express InsRs.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151027/ncomms9543/full/ncomms9543.html