BATON ROUGE — Researchers at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago and Baylor College of Medicine have identified a brain pattern that may explain the relationship between pregnancy and certain food cravings.

The study, published in Nature Neuroscience on Friday, provides new insight into how certain physiological changes during pregnancy can influence how the brain regulates food motivation. The study examined the serotonin levels and activity during pregnancy in mice.

“The discovery could ultimately improve understanding of why some women experience strong food cravings and excessive weight gain during pregnancy,” Yanlin He, director of the Brain Glycemic and Metabolism Control Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical, said.

The team also identified a neural pathway involved in reward and motivation. Activating this pathway lowered food-craving-like behavior in pregnant animals, while restricting the pathway increased the behavior in nonpregnant animals. This research team’s work builds on previous research showing that pregnancy-related food cravings involve changes in the brain’s reward system.

“However, the findings are currently based in animal model studies, so we caution that directly manipulating serotonin during pregnancy could carry risks,” He said. “More importantly, we hope to gather additional evidence from human clinical studies at PBRC to determine whether these findings can be translated to the prevention of maternal obesity.”

For more information on PBRC, click here.