Gastrointestinal Signals: Satiety

During a meal, ingested nutrients stimulate the activation or release of a variety of afferent neural and peptide signals. A subset of these provide information about the quality and quantity of ingested nutrients and serve as feedback mediators controlling food intake within and between meals. Vagal afferent feedback can be stimulated by the volume and nutrient character of meals. Peptides, such as cholecystokinin, glucagon, and amylin, can play roles in terminating an individual meal. Other peptides, such as glucagon-like peptide-1, pancreatic polypeptide, and peptide YY(3-36), can contribute to the control of food intake across meals. Vagal afferent and hindbrain signaling plays a major role in mediating the feeding inhibitory actions of these peptides.