Brain glucose level, blood oxygen level, and other parameters. These hypothalamic nuclei send output signals to motor areas that can generate actions to rectify deficiencies. Some of the outputs also go to the pituitary gland, a tiny gland attached to the brain directly underneath the hypothalamus. The pituitary gland secretes hormones into the bloodstream, where they circulate throughout the body and induce changes in cellular activity. The individual animals need to express survival-promoting behaviors, such as seeking food, water, shelter, and a mate. The motivational system in the brain monitors the current state of satisfaction of these goals, and activates behaviors
History of beliefs about the human body is important to understanding histories of coercion and control, sex and gender, and other important but culturally varied aspects of human experience. Another prominent voice in the field at the same time was Caroline Walker Bynum, whose 1988 "Holy Feast and Holy Fast" became a landmark study. Both Bynum and Porter noted that during the 1980s Western history of the body research drew on post-structuralist thought, such as Michel Foucault's ideas of biopolitics and biopower, which emphasised that state power is not abstract, but exercised through and over human bodies. But both expressed a concern that research was focusing too