While hunger and satiety are the main modulators of our desire to eat food, we all know that experiences shape our wants and wishes. And this next brain structure, the amygdala, will open the gateway to a vast interconnection between different brain regions and nuclei, that influence our appetite and desire to eat or not to eat.
The most essential structure of our brain is the hypothalamus. It controls our hormone signaling, and when it comes to food, hormones are the stronger messengers through which our body is being influenced. To understand better, how this small area in our brain influences our food behavior, you need to read this post.
Food perception involves our whole nervous system. Food travels through our digestive units, but the interconnection with the brain provides a gateway for understanding how the corresponding signals modulate our behavior from various aspects, from the physiological need to emotional associations.
To understand the mechanism of storing and burning body fat, we first need to get familiar with the basics of fat metabolism. The anabolic process is called lipogenesis, while the catabolic process is called lipolysis. In general, lipogenesis is activated by eating, while its reverse, lipolysis, is activated by fasting or physical activity. Most of the time, these two processes are in balance, but in the case when lipogenesis is active longer than lipolysis, fat accumulation occurs (and vice versa).
In this blog post, we are going to look into the most basic and initial perception of food – the perception of external signals. On a more conceptual level, we will look into how and for what purpose, do organisms perceive food, and how this drives behavior. We will also dive deeper into neural correlates, which provide the integration of the perceived information, into a behavior.
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