To like, perchance to want

States that it is possible to get an animal to eat--even when they are stuffed. Takes an electrode to the brain's hypothalamus; Kent Berridge, Ph.D.; Feeding doesn't hinge on the pleasure of food; Wanting is learned; Looking for a drug that willstop the addiction.

By PT Staff, published on March 01, 1992

Appetite

You can lead a rat to water. You can even make him drink. But that doesn't mean he'll like it.

It's possible to get animals to eat, even when they're stuffed. All it takes is an electrode to the brain's lateral hypothalamus. And it's just as true of men and women as it is of monkeys, guinea pigs, and rats.

But in a series of studies measuring the facial reactions to taste in rats, Kent Berridge, Ph.D., has shown that such feeding does not hinge on the taste pleasure of food. In fact, rats led to eat this way showed more signs of taste aversion than pleasure. Mini video cameras caught them sticking out their tongues, dropping their jaws, shaking their heads, and flailing their forelimbs--all signals of distaste in the rat world, the University of Michigan psychologist recently reported in Behavioral Neuroscience.

If it isn't for the pleasure, then why do they do it? So far, it looks as though wanting and liking develop in different parts of the brain, and it takes lots of external stimuli to convert a basic pleasure into the desire for it. Liking may be simple, but wanting is learned.

Berridge is now looking for a drug that will come between man and addiction. But it looks as if the rest of us will just have to go on confusing what we like with what we want.

Illustration ((c) David Coulson)