Discover Magazine's January 2005 issue names 2 UCLA scientists as authors of significant discoveries in 2004.Discover Magazine's January 2005 edition recognizes the work of two UCLA researchers as among the top 100 scientific discoveries of 2004. The separate research studies were led by Dr. Julio Licinio, of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and Neuropsychiatric Institute, and by Paul Thompson, of the Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Licinio's team discovered that lean people experience a huge nighttime surge of ghrelin — the hormone that stimulates hunger — but obese people do not. Published June 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study suggests that obesity suppresses the ghrelin spike, perhaps disrupting the body's internal cues for hunger and overpowering its ability to regulate appetite. The findings may point researchers to new biological targets for treating obesity.

Thompson's study at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging shows selective abnormalities in chronic methamphetamine abusers' brain regions that are important to memory and emotion