Studies have shown that people that are not that interested in eating are more interested in taking drugs like cocaine. Isn’t that a weird finding? Apparently the desire to eat in our brain is linked to also not wanting to do drugs! Hit the jump for details.
Steph Bassanini
People uninterested in food may be more likely to take cocaine, a study shows.
Researchers found that neurons associated with overeating were also associated with non-food activities, such as drug taking.
But while both are linked to the brain’s ‘reward’ circuitry, a desire to eat was linked to decreased interest in ‘novelty’ behaviour such as drugs, reports Nature Neuroscience.
Researchers had been studying the brain to investigate the notion that food could become a ‘drug of abuse’ just like cocaine.
But they found that the common wisdom was ‘flipped on its head’.
Dr Marcelo Dietrich, of Yale School of Medicine, said: ‘Using genetic approaches, we found that increased appetite for food can actually be associated with decreased interest in novelty as well as in cocaine, and on the other hand, less interest in food can predict increased interest in cocaine.’
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