brains and guts

[mellowtigger]

Results have been announced from a study on calorie recognition. It confirms my theory that the brain has areas which can identify (as if another physical sense) bloodstream chemicals. They engineered some mice to be taste-blind (for sweets), then they monitored their brains to see how they responded to foods of various caloric value. They found that, yes, a certain brain region called the nucleus accumbens responds in as little as 10 minutes to calorie content even in the absence of taste input. I hope studies like this continue until they figure out emotion-recognition as well.

Bad news, bears:

And, in addition to all the other health effects of having a prominent gut (such as diabetes, stroke, and heart disease), we can now add dementia risk as well.  *sigh*

Life, I've noticed, is fatal.

Comments

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

This is why artificial sweeteners bother me. What happens in the long term when your body repeatedly gets one signal that says "yay calories" and another signal that says "whoops, just kidding?" This might be programming people to overeat.