Hats off to Dr. Juan Song on the publication of SOM/UNC Health’s Newsrooms’ article, “Junk Food Puts Memory at Risk—Here’s How to Protect It.” The feature highlights her team’s groundbreaking research showing how even short-term consumption of a high-fat, “junk food” diet can quickly impair brain function—well before weight gain or diabetes occur. Her team identified overactivity in specific hippocampal neurons that disrupt memory processing, and importantly, demonstrated that restoring glucose levels, adjusting dietary patterns, or using pharmacological strategies can rescue memory performance. This exciting work sheds new light on the powerful link between diet and brain health and offers promising strategies to protect against cognitive decline. “We knew that diet and metabolism could affect brain health, but we didn’t expect to find such a specific and vulnerable group of brain cells, CCK interneurons in the hippocampus, that were directly disrupted by short-term high-fat diet exposure,” Song said, who is a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center. “What surprised us most was how quickly these cells changed their activity in response to reduced glucose availability, and how this shift alone was enough to impair memory.” Juan Song, PhD, principle investigator, is a Professor and Jeffrey Houpt Distinguished Investigator in the UNC Department of Pharmacology and the Neuroscience Center. Taylor Landry, PhD, Department of Pharmacology is first author on the paper. “This work highlights how what we eat can rapidly affect brain health and how early interventions, whether through fasting or medicine, could protect memory and lower the risk of long-term cognitive problems linked to obesity and metabolic disorders,” said Song. “In the long run, such strategies could help reduce the growing burden of dementia and Alzheimer’s linked to metabolic disorders, offering more holistic care that addresses both body and brain.” You can read the full article published on UNC Health/SOM News September 11 here: “Junk Food Puts Memory at Risk—Here’s How to Protect It.” The research article being highlighted, “Targeting glucose-inhibited hippocampal CCK interneurons prevents cognitive impairment in diet-induced obesity,” was published in Neuron, also on September 11. https://newatlas.com/diet-nutrition/junk-food-memory-dementia/ This article was updated September 24, 2025 with quotes from the UNC article and links to other media that have included the article in their news. The added quotes are from the UNC Health/SOM News article.
UPDATE: Since the UNC Press release published last week there has been enormous media attention to the article: