This is your brain on milkshakes

This is your brain -- and this is your brain on milkshakes
October 17, 2008

Drink a milkshake and the pleasure center in your brain gets a hit of happy -- unless you are overweight.

It sounds counterintuitive. But U.S. scientists who watched young women savor milkshakes while inside a brain scanner concluded that when the brain doesn't sense enough gratification from food, people may overeat to compensate.

The small but first-of-a-kind study even could predict who would pile on pounds during the next year: those who harbored a gene linked to fewer dopamine receptors in the brain, which made their brain's yum factor even more sluggish.

The study, which was led by Dr. Eric Stice, a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute, involved 43 female college students ages 18 to 22 and 33 teenagers ages 14 to 18. Body-mass-index calculations showed the young women spanned the range from skinny to obese.

The results were published in today's edition of the journal Science.