Fat Hormone Plays Key Role To Control Motivation For Food

eating yummy foodWe all know the fact that people eat not only when they are truly hungry, but also when the food seems to taste too yummy to pass up.

Recently, a new research explains how a fat hormone, called ‘leptin‘ produced by the fat tissue, influences our motivation to eat.

For the first time, researchers explain a bunch of leptin-responsive neurons in our brain. These neurons feed directly into mesolimbic dopamine system present in ventral tegmental area in our brain, which controls the rewarding properties that we assign to things.

“Dopaminergic neurons in the VTA and their downstream targets represent the site of action for drugs of abuse, and also control motivation for food, sex or a fancy car,” explained Martin Myers, Jr., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Put simply, “they control our wanting of stuff.”

Read more at Eurekalert