Orexinergic activation of medullary premotor neurons modulates the adrenal sympathoexcitation to hypothalamic glucoprivation.

Diabetes. 2014 Feb 18. [Epub ahead of print] Korim WS, Bou-Farah L, McMullan S, Verberne AJ. I picked this paper because it has a couple of things we've been looking at - differential activation of sympathetic nerves and electrophysioslogical properties of RVLM neurons. It seems that in response to low glucose, the perifornical hypothalamus somehow becomes indirectly excited (which can be blocked with GABA agonists) and releases orexin into the RVLM (which can be blocked by orexin antagonists). The RVLM responds to orexin by increasing adrenal, but not lumbar SNA, which causes an increase in adrenaline release, as measured by an increase in its metabolites. So this paper a little bit of something cool for pretty much everybody in our lab. -DH