Have you ever wondered why eating a little sugar causes us to eat more? Why does our appetite increase when we eat sugar? In a study published in the journal Nature over a week ago, Charles Zuker, an investigator from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, as well as his team, report their findings.
Like other sweet-tasting things, sugar triggers specialized taste buds on the tongue. But it also switches on an entirely separate neurological pathway -- one that begins in the gut…
In the intestines, signals heralding sugar's arrival travel to the brain, where they nurture an appetite for more, the team's experiments with mice showed. This gut-to-brain pathway appears picky, responding only to sugar molecules -- not artificial sweeteners.
Throughout this experiment, researchers were also able to identify the brain region that responds exclusively to sugar.
"Uncovering this circuit helps explain how sugar directly impacts our brain to drive consumption," he says. "It also exposes new potential targets and opportunities for strategies to help curtail our insatiable appetite for sugar."
More details about this study over at ScienceDaily.
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