NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obesity affects areas of the brain responsible for taste, according to a new US study.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Binghamton and published in the journal "Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience" (Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience).
To monitor the effect of weight gain on taste, the team monitored a group of obese mice.
The team focused on responses to taste stimuli in a nucleus called tractus solitaries, part of the brain involved in treating the sense of taste in humans and mice.
The researchers recorded responses to taste stimuli from single cells in the brainstem of obese mice by eating a high-fat diet.
Taste buds
They found that the taste responses in these obese mice were smaller and shorter in duration, and it took longer to develop, than in mice that ate fat-free foods.
The study revealed that these findings suggest that a high-fat diet produces unclear responses, but is more influential on places responsible for the sense of taste in the brain.
"These results apply only to mice at the moment, but this same process can also occur in humans," said lead researcher Dr. Patricia de Lorenzo.
"Other scientists have discovered that the number of taste buds on the tongue is decreasing in obese mice and humans, so the effects of obesity on taste responses in the human brain are also possible."