Dopamine, a “feel good” chemical, is released in the brain when we eat high-fat and sugary delights that taste good. However, it may also guide our food and drink choices through a mechanism that has nothing to do with taste, a recent mouse study finds.
A team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), describe the new mechanism in a paper published July 13 in Nature. They report that dopamine-releasing neurons in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) that is important for reward-seeking behavior, motivation, and aversion are activated by hydration.
This mechanism, the researchers say, explains how animals learn to prefer one type of food over another in order to survive in the wild. “Many animals actually get most of their water from food,” says study coauthor James Grove, a neuroscientist at UCSF. “So they presumably have to learn through experience ...
