By: Joe Serwach, UM News Service
Thursday, January 12, 2006

From the UM News Service Press Release:

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—What makes those holiday candies and Christmas cookies look so tempting? University of Michigan researchers have discovered a "pleasure spot" in the brains of rats, helping neuroscientists understand where and how pleasure is generated in humans.

U-M psychology researchers Susana Peciña and Kent Berridge detail their study in the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, explaining a pleasure spot in the brains of rats that makes sweet tastes more highly 'liked' using natural heroin-like chemicals in the nucleus accumbens (lower front of the brain).

"It's basically a tiny brain pleasure cube that chemically doubles rats' liking for sweets, and makes them eat six times more," Berridge said. "It's tucked into a larger appetite cube that increases eating many times above normal, but doesn't make the sweetness any more liked."

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To read the entire press release, go to: http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2005/Dec05/r122005.

This story was picked up by the Associated Press and appeared in media around the globe, including:

• USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-12-20-brain-sweet-pleasure_x.htm
• The Washington Post
• ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1426417
• CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/20/ap/tech/mainD8EK8RTG3.shtml
• MSNBC
• The LA Times
• Newsday
• China Daily http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/21/content_505363.htm
• China View http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-12/21/content_3951641.htm
• New Brisbane, Austrailia
• Forbes
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• The San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/12/20/national/a150416S95.DTL&type=science
• The San Jose Mercury News
• Monterey, Calif
• WZZM http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=48240
• WLNS
• Physorg.com http://www.physorg.com/news9231.html