Summary: The science of eating behavior goes beyond hunger cues; it involves sensory stimuli, internal signals, and the gut-brain connection. External cues like food packaging and advertisements influence our eating decisions, but internal signals, such as hunger and fullness, play a profound role.

Research shows that animals, including rodents, use internal cues to shape their food-related choices. The vagus nerve, which connects the gut and brain, communicates nutrient information rapidly and can induce pleasurable states. Understanding interoceptive signals can lead to more mindful and intuitive eating during the holiday season and beyond.

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Source: The Conversation

The holiday season is upon us, and with it, opportunities to indulge in festive treats. The proverbial saying you eat with your eyes first seems particularly relevant at this time of year.

The science behind eating behavior, however, reveals that the process of deciding what, when and how much to eat is far more complex than just consuming calories when your body needs fuel. Hunger cues are only part of why people choose to eat. As a scientist interested in thepsychology and biology that drives eating behavior, Im fascinated with how the brains experiences with food shape eating decisions.

So how do people decide when to eat?

Food-related visual cuescan shape feeding behaviors in both people and animals. For example, wrapping food in McDonalds packaging is sufficient toenhance taste preferencesacross a range of foods from chicken nuggets to carrots in young children. Visual food-related cues, such as presenting a light when food is delivered, can also promoteovereating behaviorsin animals by overriding energy needs.

In fact, a whole host of sensory stimuli noises, smells and textures can be associated with thepleasurable consequences of eatingand influence food-related decisions. This is why hearing a catchy radio jingle for a food brand, seeing a television ad for a restaurant or walking by your favorite eatery can shape your decision to consume and sometimes overindulge.

However, your capacity to learn about food-related cues extends beyond just stimuli from the outside world and includes theinternal milieu of your body. In other words, you also tend to eat with your stomach in mind, and you do so by using the same learning and brain mechanisms involved in processing food-related stimuli from the outside world. These internal signals, also calledinteroceptive cues, include feelings of hunger and fullness emanating from your gastrointestinal tract.

Its no surprise that the signals from your gut help set the stage for when to eat, but the role these signals play is more profound than you might expect.

Feelings of hunger or fullness act as important interoceptive cues influencing your decision-making around food.

To examine how interoceptive states shape eating behaviors, researchers trained laboratory rats toassociate feelings of hunger or satietywith whether they receive food or not.

They did this by giving rats food only when they were hungry or full, such that the rats were forced to recognize those internal cues to calculate whether food would be available or not. If a rat is trained to expect food only when hungry, it would generally avoid the area where food is available when it feels full because it does not expect to be fed.

However, when rats were injected with a hormone thattriggers hungercalled ghrelin, they approached the food delivery location more frequently. This suggests that the rats used this artificial state of hunger as an interoceptive cue to predict food delivery and subsequently behaved like they expected food.

Interoceptive states are sufficient to shape feeding behaviors even in the absence of external sensory cues. One particularly striking example comes from mice that have been genetically engineered to be unable to taste food but nevertheless show preferences for specific foodssolely by caloric content. In other words, rodents can use internal cues to shape their food-related decision-making, including when and where to eat and which foods they prefer.

These findings also suggest that feelings of hunger and the detection of nutrients is not restricted to the stomach. They also involve areas of the brain important for regulation and homeostasis, such as thelateral hypothalamus, as well as centers of the brain involved in learning and memory, such as thehippocampus.

Thegut-brain axis, or the biochemical connection between your gut and your brain, shapes feeding behaviors in many ways. One of them involves thevagus nerve, a cranial nerve that helps control the digestive tract, among other things.

The vagus nerve rapidlycommunicates nutrient informationto the brain. Activating the vagus nerve can induce a pleasurable state, such that mice will voluntarily perform a behavior, such as poking their nose through an open port, to stimulate their vagus nerve. Importantly, mice also learn toprefer foods and placeswhere vagal nerve stimulation occurred.

The vagus nerve plays an essential role in not only communicating digestive signals but also an array of other interoceptive signals that can affect how you feel and behave. In people, vagal nerve stimulation canimprove learning and memoryand can be used totreat major depression.

Your bodys capacity to use both external and internal cues to regulate how you learn and make decisions about food highlights the impressive processes involved in how you regulate your energy needs.

Poor interoceptive awareness is associated with a range ofdysfunctional feeding behaviors, such as eating disorders. For instance,anorexia may resultwhen interoceptive signals, such as feelings of hunger, are unable to trigger the motivation to eat. Alternatively, the inability to use the feeling of fullness to dampen the rewarding and pleasurable consequences of eating palatable food couldresult in binge eating.

Your interoceptive signals play an important role in regulating your daily eating patterns. During the holidays, many stressors from the outside world surround eating, such as packed social calendars, pressures to conform and feelings of guilt when overindulging.

At this time, it is particularly important to cultivate a strong connection to your interoceptive signals. This can help promoteintuitive eatingand a more holistic approach to your dietary habits.

Rather than fixating on external factors and placing conditions on your eating behavior, enjoy the moment, deliberately savor each bite and provide time for your interoceptive signals to function in the role they are designed to play.

Your brain evolved to sense your current energy needs. Byintegrating these signalswith your experience of your food environment, you can both optimize your energetic needs and enjoy the season.

Author: Alex Johnson Source: The Conversation Contact: Alex Johnson The Conversation Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

Excerpt from:
Eating with Your Eyes and Gut? How Your Brain Decides When to Eat - Neuroscience News