Memories of Meals Influence Future Eating Behavior

Memories of recently eaten foods can serve as a powerful mechanism for controlling eating behavior because they provide you with a record of your recent intake that likely outlasts most of the hormonal and brain signals generated by your meal, Hippocampal cells receive signals about hunger status and are connected to other brain areas that are important for starting and stopping eating. The researchers set out to determine if disrupting hippocampal function after a meal is eaten, when the memory of the meal is being stabilized, could promote eating later when these cells are functioning normally. The researchers found it interesting that rats would eat more saccharin after they interfered with their hippocampal function because this noncaloric sweetener produces very few gastrointestinal chemical signals generated by food. They concluded the effect they saw was most likely explained by an effect on memory consolidation, rather than by an impaired ability to process gastrointestinal messages. https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/memories-of-meals-influence-future-eating-behavior-314195?utm_campaign=NEWSLETTER_TN_Breaking%20Science%20News&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=69109618&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9cPppvVnRbvtiLWdn0doGJ6Z8_uv402a9LXAajLAHfd9grg3K1PDqX4WtesZg1oBGaC4xw17HMQDvqx5mCS9vWGz_Hwg&_hsmi=69109618