If you feel an irresistible desire to pounce on a juicy chocolate donut in a bakery window, don’t blame your lack of self-control. Is hebrainthe boss, according to a study carried out by the Northwestern University School of Medicine.
In an experiment with several subjects who had been allowed to eat their fill, the psychiatrist and neurologist Marsel Mesulam found that,after a binge, our brain remains unmoved by images of donuts and other succulent sweets. However, after 8 hours offast, those same images produce an immediate reaction from ourlímbico system, the most ancient part of the brain that we share with reptiles. “That brain region detects important stimuli. It says” I’m not just hungry, there’s food here, “explains the researcher. Next, as revealed by neuroimaging techniques, it is the spatial neurons that must be set in motion to lead us (or not) to the object of desire.
“There is a very complex system in our brain that allows us to focus our attention on the elements of the environment that are important to satisfy our needs, for example food when we are hungry, but not when we are satiated ?, the authors of the study explain in the magazineCerebral Cortex. Something similar happens if we are in a forest and we hear a creaking noise. “In this context we immediately pay full attention, because it can be a sign of danger,” says Mesulam. However, that same sound in the office would not generate any brain response. ? One of the main missions of the brain is to adapt our response to thecontext?, concludes Mesulam.
Cerebral Cortex (cercor.oxfordjournals.org)
