MMMM, Doh-nuts!

When I was at Rutgers there were always calls for students to participate in studies. You would sign up and, if selected, receive a small stipend for your time. I got called in for two or three studies that I signed up for but I have one question: Where the heck were these researchers when I was an undergrad?

Your Brain On Krispy Kremes: How Hunger Motivates

Krispy Kremes, in perhaps their first starring role in neurological research, helped lead to the discovery. In the study, subjects were tested twice -- once after gorging on up to eight Krispy Kreme donuts until they couldn't eat anymore, and on another day after fasting for eight hours.

Sounds like the same subjects were used in both studies. There were days I would have easily paid them to participate in this study.

When the subjects saw pictures of donuts after the eating binge, their brains didn't register much interest. But after the fast, two areas of the brain leaped into action upon seeing the donuts. First, the limbic brain -- an ancestral part of the brain present in all animals from snakes to frogs to humans -- lit up like fireworks.

"That part of the brain is able to detect what is motivationally significant. It says, not only am I hungry, but here is food," said senior author Marsel Mesulam, M.D., the Ruth and Evelyn Dunbar Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School and a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Next, the brain's spatial attention network shifted the hungry subject's focus toward the new object of desire -- in this case the Krispy Kremes.

Well, then. That certainly explains a good deal of what is (and isn’t) going on inside Homer Simpson’s head. He obviously has a limbic brain (“an ancestral part of the brain present in all animals from snakes to frogs to humans”) but may lack a spatial attention network. (That might also explain why he’s always walking into things. Well, that and beer.)

So remember, the next time you just have to have a donut, it may be your brain trying to tell you something and not just low self control.