Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings, Second Edition

249 Pages·2014·1.34 MB·English

by  Gary L. Wenk

Your Brain on Food

Your Brain

on
Food
H C C Y
ow HemiCals ontrol our
t F
HougHts and eelings
Second Edition
Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D.
Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience and
Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics
The Ohio State University
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1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wenk, Gary Lee, author.
Your brain on food : how chemicals control your thoughts and feelings / Gary L. Wenk.
— Second edition.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–939327–5
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Brain—physiology. 2. Emotions.
3. Neurotransmitter Agents—physiology. WL 300]
RM315
615′.78—dc23
2014014927
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Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
for Jane

CONTENTS
-
ix
Preface
chapter 1
Food, Drugs, and You 1
chapter 2
Neurobiology of Feeding: Hormones,
Overeating, and Aging 27
chapter 3
Memories, Magic, and a Major Addiction 65
chapter 4
Euphoria, Depression, and Madness 95
chapter 5
Your Brain’s Anchor to Reality 125
chapter 6
Marijuana in the Brain 141
chapter 7
Simple Molecules That Turn You On and Off 153
chapter 8
Remnants of an Ancient Past 171
vviiii
viii CONTENTS
S
chapter 9
Sleeping Versus Waking 181
chapter 10
Brain Enhancement and Other
Magical Beliefs 191
211
Suggested Readings
213
Index
PREFACE
-
V
arious writers over the past century have compared the
human brain to an elegant machine. Imagine that this
machine is full of wires and that the wires are different-colored.
Some are blue, some are red, some are green, and so on, but they
all convey information from one part of the machine to another.
Now imagine that the blue wires are organized differently than the
red wires, that the red wires are organized differently than the
green wires, and so on. If you were to look inside your brain, you
would discover that although its pathways are organized like the
colored wires in your telephone or computer, it doesn’t actually use
wires at all but instead uses cells, or neurons, to process informa-
tion: One neuron is connected to the next and to the next, and so
on. Indeed, this elegant machine, your brain, is composed of
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