The Role of the Human Hypothalamus in Food Intake Networks: An MRI Perspective

Hypothalamus (HT), this small structure often perceived through the prism of neuroimaging as morphologically and functionally homogeneous, plays a key role in the primitive act of feeding. The current paper aims at reviewing the contribution of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the study of the role of the HT in food intake regulation. It focuses on the different MRI techniques that have been used to describe structurally and functionally the Human HT. The latest advances in HT parcellation as well as perspectives in this field are presented. The value of MRI in the study of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa (AN) and obesity are also highlighted.

Single-cell genomics reveals region-specific developmental trajectories underlying neuronal diversity in the prenatal human hypothalamus

The hypothalamus is critically important for regulating most autonomic, metabolic, and behavioral functions essential for life and species propagation, yet a comprehensive understanding of neuronal subtypes and their development in the human brain is lacking. Here, we characterized the prenatal human hypothalamus by sequencing the transcriptomes of 45,574 single-cells from 12 embryos, spanning gestational weeks 4 through 25. These cells describe a temporal trajectory from proliferative stem cell populations to maturing neurons and glia, including 38 distinct excitatory and inhibitory neuronal subtypes. Merging these data with paired samples from the cortex and ganglionic eminences (GE) revealed two distinct neurogenesis pathways, one shared between GE and hypothalamus and a second unique to cortex. Gene regulatory network modeling predicted that these distinct maturation trajectories involve the activation of region- and cell type-specific transcription factor networks. These results provide the first comprehensive transcriptomic view of human hypothalamus development at cellular resolution.