Researchers Say Sweet Tooth May Be in Brain

December 21, 2005


The spot in rats’ brains makes sweet tastes more “liked” than other tastes, biopsychology researchers Susana Pecina and Kent Berridge found.


Sweetness by itself is merely a sensation, they note. Its pleasure arises within the brain, where neural systems actively paint pleasure onto the sensation to generate a “liking” reaction.


“There’s a liking cube tucked within a larger wanting cube,” Berridge said in a telephone interview.


“In our experience, they’re intertwined and inseparable,” Berridge said. “In our brain, they are separable.”

Pecina and Berridge made microinjections into rats’ brains of drugs that stimulated receptors for opioids, or heroin-like substances, causing nearby neurons to activate particular genes that began producing proteins.




On the Net:

Pecina and Berridge’s research: http://www-personal.umich.edu/berridge/

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