If you really want a drink right now, the source of your craving may be a pea-sized structure deep inside the right side of your brain, according to scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Using two different kinds of advanced brain imaging techniques (PET and fMRI), the researchers compared the results of giving beer drinkers a taste of their favorite beer versus a sports drink. After tasting the beer the participants reported increased desire to drink beer, whereas the sports drink did not provoke as much desire for beer. The brain scans also showed that the beer flavor induced more activity in both frontal lobes and in the right ventral striatum of the subjects’ brains than did the sports drink.
More specifically, both methods of brain imaging showed increased activity in the right ventral striatum, a deep structure inside the brain that is linked to motivated behavior and reward. The researchers previously showed that beer flavor triggered dopamine release; the addition of fMRI showed that craving for alcohol correlated with frontal as well as right ventral striatum activation. The study was published recently in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
PR:http://news.medicine.iu.edu/releases/2016/08/brain-craving-beer-taste.shtml
Journal article:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acer.13158/full
Corina Marinescu
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