Correlation Between Sensitivity And Eating Behaviors

The amygdala specializes in threat detection, fear, excitement, and arousal, hippocampus helps format long-term declarative memories and spatial reasoning. The anterior cingulate cortex influences autonomic function, decision making, error detection and emotion while the posterior has a role in spatial annotations memory. The septal area produces pleasurable feeling,

Maria’s family-related experiences learned during her childhood contributed to a distorted cognition of eating. Maria’s family food-related experiences are associated with her mother’s restriction of eating as a way of punishment. Use of food as a punishment increases the intake of food when the children have access to it. As consequence of this type of punishment Maria learned maladaptive attitudes and behaviors such as eating secretly and keeping food in hidden places in order to manage her hunger. Researches propose that food restrictions increase desire and intake of the food. At the same time the individual will show difficulties to self-regulate the food

The theory helps to explain the reason individuals are addicted to eating unhealthy foods. Positive behaviors occurs to people when they see processed food this is because it has meaning to them. The theory helps to explain the reason as to why people get addicted to eating unhealthy foods. People behave positively when they see processed foods because it has meaning to them. The meaning develops from testing sample then they become addictive because of developed

However recent research shows that the process is more complicated. Dopamine is not only related to pleasure but also to learning and memory, key components in going from liking a substance to becoming addicted to it. According to this theory it is believed that dopamine combines with another neurotransmitter, glutamate, to take over the brain’s system of reward related learning. This system plays an important role in sustaining life by linking such activities as eating and sex with pleasure and reward.

    In the human brain, the neurotransmitter that helps regulate voluntary body movement and emotional responses is known as dopamine. It also helps control the reward and pleasure centers of the brain.

Now, in 2015, the number of searches and available information increased from ~334,000 hits to ~32, 200, 00 hits. The idea that food has similar addictive characteristics as drugs that affect the brain is quite controversial. People tend to eat when they are depressed, happy, emotional, celebrating and many other situations because food is easily accessed and not illegal. Research regarding sugar having addictive qualities was conducted in 2010 by the University of Texas and the Oregon Research Institute. Equipped with Haagen-Dazs ice cream and a group of overweight women, the researchers measured the brains reward center activity when shown images of ice cream and when tasting an ice cream milk shake; six months down the road, the group reconvened and the women once again tasted the ice cream. The results were that the woman who had gained weight over the time gap had decreased activity in the striatum, an area of the brain that registers reward, thus needing more to reach a feel good level of satisfaction (Langreth & Stanford, 2011). "The significance of this finding is that these are the same regions of the brain that light up in drug addicts who are show images of drug paraphernalia or drugs" (Wormer & Davis, 2013).

The mesolimbic reward system is typically stimulated by life-sustaining and pleasurable stimuli such as food, sex, alcohol, and drugs. The mesolimbic system is a complex interaction of multiple components of the brain including the cerebral cortex, locus ceruleus, nucleus accumbens, and the ventral tegmental area. This reward system is responsible for perception of both physical interaction with our environment and life-sustaining actions. Upon activation, the mesolimbic system releases neurotransmitters, primary of which is dopamine.

Dopamine establishes different levels of the neurotransmitter in both the dorsa striatal and ventral striatal-prefrontal as dopamine is released. The dopamine released in the ventral striatal determines how strenuously individuals perform repeated tasks over time and the dopamine released in the dorsa striatal determines the speed in which the actions occur (p. 645). According to Luck, Wevrick & Vitaterna (2016) dopamine plays a crucial role in reward-associated behavior such as gambling, drug use, and over-eating, hence the word dopamine is often paired with the term “pleasure system.” Associations with dopamine have been correlated with feelings of enjoyment, pleasure and rewarding experiences and the reward canal is concentrated on dopaminergic neurons located mostly in areas of the midbrains (448-449).

This first video called, The Mechanisms of Drug Addiction in the Brain (Alila Medical Media, 2014), was a very informative video of the brain structure. It showed us how different drugs react in our brain and showed us a great visual of how these drugs interact and lead to more production of dopamine (e.g. over stimulation of dopamine levels leading to euphoria/good feelings). The video explains this process as, the major reward pathways involved in the transmission of the neurotransmitter dopamine from the ventral tegmental area – the VTA - of the midbrain to the limbic system and the frontal cortex (Alila Medical Media, 2014). The text also explained this process as directly or indirectly targeting the brain’s rewards system by releasing

Overweight individuals may learn an association between seeing food and motivation to eat. Considering that there was no significant effect of the conditioned response to chocolate milk in lean individuals, we must wonder how this may predict obesity. This study also shows it may be possible that lean individuals need more pairings or more of the stimulus to create a conditioned response similar to overweight individuals (Meyer et. al., 2014). It is difficult for extinction to occur especially in terms of food because we need it to survive but this study may help us understand better the mechanism behind obesity and overeating. It may be easier to attempt to associate healthier foods that taste similar to the unhealthy food as a way of trying to break conditioning to the unhealthy

5. In the dopamine reward system, there is a stimulus that is given to change the behavior of certain things. The dopamine is present in food, sex, and drugs. Dopamine can be blocked off by the drug pimozide. Pimozide causes the reinforcer (drugs for example) to no longer be reinforcing. There still may be a hedonistic value, but the motivation value will make you not want it. The reward system starts off at the ventral tegmental area. Once the VTA is stimulated, it will send signals to a number of other areas in the brain, through dopamine, to be able to pass on the message.

Summary: This study compared twins that were restrained and unrestrained eaters. The scale in the study characterized restrained eaters as displaying cognitive control over eating habits, comorbid with personal weight concerns. All twins participated together and were told that the study was focusing on taste perception. Participants were given breakfast followed by fMRI exams. A statistician was present to reduce any bias in the order of sessions between restrained and unrestrained eaters. Following, twins were given a preview of how the experiment would work, and samples of how fast pictures of food would appear and disappear in a slideshow. Participants had to assign each picture of food with its own distinct category of fattening (high caloric foods) or non-fattening (low caloric foods). Directly after the scans the pairs of twins were given a 10.9 ounce milkshake and had consume the contents in 10 minutes. After it was finished twins were asked to record the flavor of milkshake before another fMRI session was administered. The experiment was conducted by showing 13 distinct sets of photographs, 10

The above-mentioned dorsal and ventral striatum, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the anterior insular and the orbitofrontal cortex are all implicated in reward as well as pain processing.

New research suggests that there is a biological link between stress and the drive to eat. Comfort foods, which are foods high in sugar, fat, and calories, seem to calm the body’s response to chronic stress. In

This article aimed at discovering if a steady food consumption, as opposed to a fast food consumption, would reduce the potential for increased body weight. It was made evident that the authors believed the slower you eat, the better for your body and overall health. This article looked at if individuals would become more full, have less hunger, and have lower meal energy intake if they are given a meal to eat slowly. This was then compared to individuals experiences after they are given the same exact plate to eat at a fast speed. The goal was to see if there was a difference between the two groups and if the results are significant. It discusses many previous researches, identifying one by