Emotional brain drives eating
A hormone that signals satiety stimulates the brain's reward centers
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"One possible explanation for these results is that when people are fasted, their drive to eat comes predominantly from more primitive brain centres. When they have been fed, the drive comes from the anticipated pleasure or value of the food," Paul Matthews of Imperial College, London, who did not participate in the study, told The Scientist via Email. "I think one of the most interesting things about the paper is that it shows how a gut hormone can regulate the domain of neural signal processing that we use," Michael Cowley of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, who did not participate in the study, told The Scientist. "It can switch us from homeostatic processing to reward processing and back again." He noted that the reward signaling pathway could provide novel targets for treating obesity and eating disorders. Matt Kaplan mail@the-scientist.comLinks within this article:R.L. Batterham et al, "PYY modulation of cortical and hypothalamic brain areas predicts feeding behaviour in humans," Nature, October 15, 2007. http://www.nature.comSteven Williams http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/staff/profile/?go=10917H.R. Berthoud, "Interactions between the "cognitive" and "metabolic" brain in the control of food intake," Physiology & Behavior, January 12, 2007. http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/17307205Rachel Batterham http://www.ucl.ac.uk/medicine/diabetes/staff/rb.html J. F. Gautier, et al, "Effect of satiation on brain activity in obese and lean women," Obesity Research, November, 2001. http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/11707534H. Black, "Mother love and the brain," The Scientist, April 12, 2004. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14580/Paul Matthews http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/p.matthews/Michael Cowley http://onprc.ohsu.edu/discovery/dspScientistsItem.cfm?doc_id=124S. Blackman, "The enormity of obesity," The Scientist, May 24, 2004. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14698/
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Matt Kaplan
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