Adaptations that enhanced the abilities to acquire, store, and efficiently utilize the energy in foods were of fundamental importance in brain evolution. In this episode professor Alan Watts of the University of Southern California describes the complicated elegant ways in which the brain regulates food intake including neuroendocrine systems, feedback signaling from the body to the brain, and neuronal networks involved in reward, learning and memory, and decision-making. Advances in understanding the neural systems that control appetite and energy balance are providing avenues for interventions to combat the epidemic of obesity.
Links:
Review article on the control of eating by professor Watts and colleagues:
file:///Users/markmattson/Downloads/physrev.00028.2020%20(1).pdf
Brain Ponderings podcast with Dr. Mark Mattson