Willpower (or a lack thereof) is not the only reason we find a slice of pizza harder to resist than a stick of celery when we’re feeling hungry.
Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has published new research linking brain activity to the electric frequency waves in the stomach associated with hunger and satiety.
The findings support the theory that people who experience heightened responses to seeing and smelling food are more likely to overeat.
“To our surprise, we discovered that while higher executive functions, as measured behaviourally, were dominant factors in weight loss, this was not reflected in patterns of brain connectivity,” says Gidon Levakov, a graduate student who led the study.
“Consequently, we found that weight loss is not merely a matter of willpower, but is actually connected to much more basic visual and olfactory cues.”
Sight and smell making the difference
As part of the research, 92 participants regularly underwent brain imaging scans and executive function tests over an 18-month weight loss intervention program.
Researchers noticed when mealtime came around the parts of the brain corresponding to basic triggers like smell and sight gave off higher readings than the multi-model regions associated with activities like acts of willpower.
The findings were different in each participant, suggesting some people are more likely to be persuaded by the visual and olfactory cues in food than others.
“It appears that visual information may be an important factor triggering eating,” said Professor Galia Avidan, who also worked on the study.
“This is reasonable, given that vision is the primary sense in humans.”
So, it seems like beauty is in the eye of the beholder – even when it comes to a bowl of chips.
Makes sense to us!
