A group of American neurophysiologists lead by Gene Wang from Brookhaven National Laboratory studied the brain activity of 23 healthy men and women after they stayed off-food for 17 hours. After the “diet” the scientists asked the participants either to think about the most delicious food, or to mentally suppress thoughts about food. The study used positron emission tomography to examine the brain activity. Who do you think found it easier to complete this task?
Interesting enough, men find it easier to control their appetite, than women do. Men were the only ones who could suppress their appetite using their will-power after going without food for a long time. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists.
Whereas will-power helped the participants lower the hunger only slightly, for both sexes, but only males, however, had significantly lower activity in the orbital-frontal cortex – the area of the brain associated with emotion regulation, balance, and motivation. Earlier studies have proven that this region “conducts” our desire to eat.
Wang and his colleagues, including Nora Volkov, head of the U.S. National Institute of the Study of bad habits, are confident that their work will explain why men and women gain weight differently. Furthermore, they hope that the study will help fight or at least partly overcome the obesity epidemic, which hit American women more than American men.
Source of the image: tiny-news.blogspot.com.
