To see if humans with obesity show evidence of injury in the hypothalamus, we called on our colleague Ellen Schur, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington. She specializes in a technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows researchers and doctors to observe the structure of live tissues without harming them, sort of like an X-ray that can see soft tissues in great detail. One of the conditions doctors use MRI to diagnose is brain damage resulting from a past injury, such as stroke or physical trauma. This is because when the brain is injured, astrocytes go into
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